The suit by U.S. regulators against Binance Holdings Ltd. focuses in large part on the work of the cryptocurrency exchange’s former chief compliance officer, alleging he willfully aided and abetted the firm in evading U.S. laws.
Samuel Lim, Binance’s compliance chief between 2018 and 2022, faces civil charges of undermining Binance’s compliance program and conducting activities to evade rules designed to prevent illicit financial activity, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said Monday.
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The CFTC, the derivatives market regulator, alleged that Mr. Lim and other officers promoted the use of creative means to help the exchange’s customers circumvent Binance’s compliance controls. He allegedly implemented a corporate policy that advised Binance’s U.S. customers to use virtual private networks, or VPNs, to avoid Binance’s internet protocol address-based controls or to create new offshore shell companies to avoid the exchange’s anti-money-laundering controls, according to a complaint filed by the CFTC Monday in Chicago federal court.
Source: CFTC Charges Against Binance Highlight Role of Former Compliance Chief – WSJ