The SEC alleged this too in its complaint. In one of these accounts, held by a trading firm called Merit Peak which is controlled by Mr Zhao, Binance mixed customer funds with corporate revenues and used the monies to buy the exchange's bespoke dollar-linked crypto token, Reuters found.
#Ceo of binance series#
This included a series of accounts that Binance opened at now-defunct US lender Silvergate Bank, Reuters reported last month. Mr Zhao tasked his Chinese-born head of back office, Guangying Chen, with managing the company's finances. Mr Zhao installed a tight circle of associates, many of whom had worked or studied in China, into top jobs.Ĭo-founder Yi He now runs Binance's $US7.5 billion ($11.3 billion) venture capital arm, as well as other key departments. The exchange, however, has repeatedly refused to disclose where its trading platform is located.įrom the company's earliest days, Mr Zhao kept a tight grip on Binance, as a powerful leader committed to secrecy and focused on market domination, a Reuters report last year found. The tycoon, known by his staff and online followers by his initials CZ, has crisscrossed the globe in his quest for success, working in Tokyo and New York before moving to Shanghai, where he embraced crypto and founded Binance in 2017.īinance became the world's biggest crypto exchange within six months, and now accounts for about 60 per cent of global crypto trading volumes, according to research firm CCData.
Mr Zhao was born in China before moving to Canada in 1989 when he was 12, two months after China's Tiananmen Square crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, he wrote in a blog last year. The US Justice Department has been investigating Binance for alleged criminal sanctions violations and money laundering with some prosecutors believing they have sufficient evidence to charge Mr Zhao and other top executives.īinance said at the time it did not have any insight into the inner workings of the justice department. "Zhao and Binance entities engaged in an extensive web of deception, conflicts of interest, lack of disclosure, and calculated evasion of the law," SEC Chair Gary Gensler said. That dream is now looking more distant after the SEC's action. "The idea that a five-year-old start-up could mature and operate at the same level as a financial institution that has been around for 200 years was once impossible to fathom," the billionaire wrote in January in a review of the previous year. This year, Mr Zhao felt a major goal was almost within his grasp: a seat at the top table of finance. The 46-year-old chief executive did not waver in his belief as he built up his crypto exchange. "We want to take over the entire market!" he told staff in a company chat group that year.
In response to the SEC's allegations, Binance said: "We intend to defend our platform vigorously," adding that "because Binance is not a US exchange, the SEC's actions are limited in reach."īinance said any allegations that user assets have been at risk "are simply wrong".Įver since he launched Binance in Shanghai back in 2017, Mr Zhao dreamt big. Mr Zhao's towering ambitions are now coming up against the concerted efforts of US regulators to rein in a company that they allege has grown to a colossal size by systematically evading US laws. The billionaire tycoon already faces charges from the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), filed in March, and his exchange has been under investigation by the Justice Department too.
The complaint further threatens Mr Zhao's vast business empire, which for years has dominated the crypto industry. These range from allegedly manipulating Binance's trading volumes and failing to restrict US customers from its unregulated platform to commingling and diverting billions of dollars in customer funds "as they please". The commission has accused Binance founder Changpeng Zhao of operating a "web of deception," charging him and his exchange with 13 offences.
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