Former FBI agent to lead Binance.US investigations unit

The U.S. arm of the bitcoin exchange Binance has hired former FBI agent ФБР Khan to head its investigations division. говорится in a press release.

His duties will include collaboration with law enforcement, regulators and other trading platforms to identify and curb illicit activity on the platform. He will also be tasked with building an ‘investigations infrastructure’.

According to the release, over the past year Binance.US has strengthened its legal and compliance operations. The unit has increased its staff by 145% and allocated a fifth of its personnel to these functions.

Chief Legal Officer Krishna Juvvadi, in a comment to Cointelegraph, noted that the unit led by Khan is a wholly new Binance.US division. He said the former agent has become the first ‘Head of Investigations’ at the U.S. affiliate.

Khan is known for high-profile cases involving financial crime. In 2006, he focused on insider trading in hedge funds and was involved in cases of extortion and hacking attacks on crypto and traditional companies. Reuters described him as ‘the man most feared on Wall Street.’

In February, media reported that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission was interested in a link between Binance.US and two trading firms affiliated with the founder of the parent company, Changpeng Zhao.

Earlier, Reuters, in its own investigation, concluded that Binance repeatedly hid information from regulators, neglected KYC procedures and acted counter to the recommendations of its own compliance department.

In March 2021, Bloomberg reported on Binance’s activity being studied by the CFTC to determine whether US residents could be allowed to trade crypto-derivatives without the proper license.

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