- Companies Bittrex crypto asset platform files for bankruptcy after SEC complaint
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed charges against Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency platform, and its founder, Changpeng Zhao, for numerous violations of securities market laws, including the diversion of "billions" of its investors to an opaque company and the manipulation of the platform's trading volume.
According to the operation described by the US investigators, the platform would have transmitted billions of dollars from its investors to a company controlled by Zhao called Merit Peak Limited without warning its customers.
On the other hand, Binance would have used another entity controlled by its founder, this time, Sigma Chain, to artificially raise the trading volume on the platform.
"Through thirteen charges, we allege that Zhao and the Binance companies concocted an extensive web of deception, conflicts of interest, lack of accountability and calculated evasion of the law," said SEC Chairman Gary Gensler.
The platform and its founder had been in the crosshairs of US authorities for months. The lawsuit states that those involved would also have misled investors about the controls existing on the platform or where the funds were kept.
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