French Lawmaker Criticizes Binance Approval

A French lawmaker is urging the country’s market regulator to reconsider its “incomprehensible” decision last month to OK the cryptocurrency exchange Binance.

As the Financial Times reported Monday (June 27),  Aurore Lalucq, French MEP and member of the European parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, wants the Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF) to review its ruling, which she said gave Binance a “guarantee of respectability.”

The report noted that Lalucq’s comments are part of a larger wave of concern about the AMF’s decision in May to register one of Binance’s subsidiaries as a digital assets services company.

Read more: EU Less Likely to Have Battle Over Crypto Regulator

While Binance received a warm welcome in France, the trading platform hasn’t been as lucky in other countries.

As PYMNTS reported, the company has been investigated in the U.S. by a host of federal agencies, including the IRS, Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

And last June, the Financial Conduct Authority in the U.K. said Binance was “not capable of being effectively supervised,” warning that its “complex and high-risk financial products” posed “a significant risk to consumers.”

More recently, the FCA said it was concerned about possible risk to consumers stemming from a deal giving Binance access to U.K. payments network Paysafe.

See also: FCA ‘Concerned’ About Binance Accessing UK Payments Network

That deal was initially seen as a way to reforge the connection between Binance and the British financial system after the company lost access to the Faster Payments network. That happened when the FCA issued a consumer alert against the exchange, saying it had to “stop all regulated activities in the country.”

In a letter to the AMF obtained by the Financial Times, Lalucq said the regulator’s decision was “surprising and even worrying . . . especially since many other supervisors, and not the least significant ones, have already refused to give Binance any form of registration or approval.”

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