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0 pointsdisgruntledphd25mo ago0 comments

Sorry, this is not true. All financial institutions are required to have AML controls, which cost a lot of money.

These controls are mostly performative, but Binance wildly flouted them. This pardon means that basically no crypto company needs to worry about AML now, which is bad for the world.

The reason that nobody gets convicted for this is because they have somewhat adequate controls, whereas Binance basically welcomed money launderers with open hands.

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miohtama5mo ago

The point being, no money laundering was pointed out to the court, although I sure this happened to some scale. Binance works with the police, before and after the conviction, it's not a laundromat like some Russian cryptocurrency exchanges.

But you are right the AML controls were weak, and CZ was convicted for this. KYC requirements arrived to Binance very late. But they were not convicted of fraud (like Sam Bankman-Fried from FTX). No users lost money. A lot of commenters get this wrong.

The US banks get slapped for similar compliance breaches all the time e.g.:

https://qz.com/bank-of-america-bofa-occ-bank-secrecy-act-bsa...

javier25mo ago

Binance also had internal communication that specifically told personnel to ignore certain AML rules and certain customers.

nailer5mo ago

Compare with TD bank, that laundered money for the cartels - AFAIK nobody is in prison.

disgruntledphd2OP5mo ago

Yeah, it does seem unfair. However, it's important to note that you must have these controls, and Binance didn't. The effectiveness of these controls is not the point (sadly).

This is a super, super low bar. One can meet the BSA requirements by sending every transaction to the regulators, but Binance didn't even do that.

paulryanrogers5mo ago

That should be addressed as well.

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