US Authorities Close In: Binance Expected to Pay Penalties for Regulatory Probes
Major crypto exchange Binance will likely pay monetary penalties to settle current investigations by the US authorities, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing the firm’s chief strategy officer.
According to Patrick Hillmann, the company is working on patching the compliance gaps and mistakes made earlier in its existence - but it is likely that it will be asked by the regulators to pay the fines nonetheless.
This may be the way for the exchange to end the regulatory and law-enforcement investigations into its business.
Hilman was cited by the WSJ as stating that,
Binance is "working with regulators to figure out what are the remediations we have to go through now to make amends for that." [...] The outcome will be "likely a fine, could be more.… We just don’t know. That is for regulators to decide."
These above-mentioned gaps occurred due to Binance's fast growth, the firm’s chief strategy officer argued, especially since the business was started by software engineers who were not knowledgeable about the rules and laws that addressed the risk of bribery, corruption, money laundering, and economic sanctions.
Per Bloomberg, citing Hilman, the company's initially small staff was spread too thin as the exchange was working on international expansion, compliance, and cybersecurity.
"It’s a tremendous burden. [...] As a result, there were some gaps in our compliance system in the first two years."
He claimed that the gaps have since been closed.
As for how much they'd have to pay, or when for that matter, Hillmann could not say. However, per the WSJ, he added that,
Binance is "highly confident and feeling really good about where those discussions [with the US authorities] are going. [...] It will be a good moment for our company
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