Court Allows Most SEC Claims Against Binance to Proceed

Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the District Court for the District of Columbia has partially dismissed the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) lawsuit against Binance, though most allegations will be considered.

She granted the exchange’s motion to dismiss the regulator’s claims regarding secondary sales of the BNB token, the offering of the BUSD stablecoin, and the Simple Earn product.

The SEC’s allegations concerning the ICO and subsequent sales of BNB by the platform, the BNB Vault program, failure to register, and non-compliance with anti-fraud rules will continue to be examined. The same applies to the staking service on Binance.US.

Charges against former Binance head Changpeng Zhao, alleging that he, as a controlling person, violated the Exchange Act, remain in the case.

The Commission filed the lawsuit against the defendants in June 2023, presenting a total of 13 claims.

In her decision regarding secondary sales of BNB, Jackson referenced Judge Analisa Torres’s 2023 ruling in the SEC case against Ripple Labs.

FOX Business reporter Eleanor Terrett suggested that this could help lawyers for Coinbase, Kraken, and ConsenSys strengthen their positions in disputes with the regulator.

You can fully expect @coinbase, @krakenfx and @Consensys lawyers to use this opinion to bolster their positions in their own litigations.

And the @SECGov lawyers can no longer argue that the @Ripple ruling was merely an outlier that no other judges agree with. https://t.co/xC4VOtJvOX

— Eleanor Terrett (@EleanorTerrett) June 29, 2024

In her view, SEC representatives can no longer claim that Torres’s decision was an exception unsupported by any other judge.

In November 2023, Binance settled claims with the U.S. Department of Justice regarding sanctions violations and money laundering, agreeing to pay $4.3 billion. The fine for Zhao personally amounted to $50 million.

At the time of writing, the exchange’s founder is serving a four-month prison sentence following an April verdict.