The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has sued crypto platform Binance and several top executives, alleging that they offered unregistered crypto futures and other derivatives for trading in the United States in violation of U.S. laws and devised a “secret plot” to help customers evade restrictions.
Binance stands accused of running a cryptocurrency derivatives-trading operation in the United States without properly registering it, in violation of CFTC regulations and the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA), according to the complaint (pdf), filed on March 27 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.
Changpeng Zhao, founder and CEO of Binance, and Samuel Lim, the company’s former chief compliance officer, are also named in the lawsuit. It accuses them of falsely claiming to be restricting Americans from using the platform while in reality they were using a “calculated, phased approach” to increase Binance’s presence in the United States….