Will Binance face secondary sanctions for serving Russian citizens?
Date: 2023-06-09 Categories: BUSINESS
The agency intends to find out if Binance officials or companies allowed Russians to bypass US sanctions and transfer money through their trading platform. According to available information, at the time of writing, neither the exchange nor its leaders have been charged with wrongdoing.
Along with this, the US Internal Revenue Service, together with the Chainalysis analytical firm and Ukrainian law enforcement officers, took up tracking cryptocurrency transactions of Russian citizens.
Binance has repeatedly stated in official comments that it is fully compliant with all US and other international sanctions. At the same time, the trading platform has a complex corporate structure with many legal entities in various countries, and the location of its offices and the name of the company responsible for the safety of user funds are unknown.
Despite the fact that users are served on the same binance.com domain, with the exception of citizens of the United States and Bahrain, their registration is carried out through different legal entities. Thus, the Russians continue to use the services of the exchange, presumably through jurisdictions that have not joined the sanctions.
And although from the point of view of the local laws of Ukraine, the United States and the EU, this cannot be considered a violation, the interviewed experts told ForkLog about the potential threat of secondary sanctions imposed on the exchange by these states.
