Former Binance.US CEO Reportedly Hires Lawyer as Government Investigates Binance

A former CEO of Binance.US has reportedly hired a lawyer.

Catherine Coley, who launched the U.S.-regulated partner of the global crypto exchange Binance before leaving the company two years later, did so as the U.S. government launched an investigation into Binance, Reuters reported Wednesday (March 29), citing unnamed sources.

Coley is not named in the civil complaint announced Tuesday (March 28) by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and her status in investigations being led by other government agencies is not known, the report added.

Her lawyer for the U.S. investigations is James McDonald, a partner at Sullivan & Cromwell, who was previously a federal prosecutor and director of enforcement at the CFTC, according to the report.

McDonald and Sullivan & Cromwell did not immediately reply to PYMNTS’ request for comment.

This news comes on the same day that it was reported that Binance spent years hiding its connections to China, contradicting claims by the company that it had left China after the government began cracking down on the cryptocurrency industry in 2017.

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao and other executives repeatedly told workers to hide the company’s presence in China, which included an office that was in use until late 2019 and a bank used to pay some workers’ wages, the Financial Times (FT) reported Wednesday.

Reached for comment by PYMNTS, a Binance spokesperson rejected the claims in the FT report and said, “Binance does not operate in China nor do we have any technology, including servers or data, based in China.”

Two days earlier, on Monday (March 27), the CFTC charged Zhao, Binance Holdings Limited, Binance Holdings (IE) Limited and Binance (Services) Holdings Limited in federal court with violations of the Commodity Exchange Act and CFTC regulations.

It also charged Samuel Lim, Binance’s chief compliance officer from 2018 to 2022, with aiding and abetting these violations.

In a statement provided to PYMNTS, a Binance spokesperson said the firm has been working collaboratively with the CFTC for two years, that it finds the filing “unexpected and disappointing” and that it has boosted its compliance team from 100 to 750 over the past two years.