Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Binance, resigned after entering a guilty plea to charges of money laundering.
“I made mistakes, and I must take responsibility. This is best for our community, for Binance, and for myself”, Zhao said in a post on X.
The largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, Binance, has been ordered by the Justice Department to pay $4.3 billion in fines and forfeitures. It claimed that Binance had assisted users in eluding international sanctions. Additionally, the Justice Department claimed that the exchange had made money transfers for terrorists and criminals easier.
“Binance enabled nearly $900 million in transactions between US and Iranian users, and facilitated millions of dollars in transactions between US users and users in Syria, and in the Russian occupied Ukrainian regions of Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk”, said a spokesperson from Justice Department.
Federal authorities must now be notified of any suspicious activity by Binance.
Binance is the largest marketplace in the world for buying and selling cryptocurrencies and other digital assets, and a Cayman Islands-registered company.
“Between August 2017 and April 2022, there were direct transfers of approximately $106 million in bitcoin to Binance.com wallets from Hydra. Hydra was a popular Russian darknet marketplace, frequently utilised by criminals, that facilitated the sale of illegal goods and services,” the department further said.
