Legal troubles for the world's leading cryptocurrency exchange Binance continue to escalate as a new report suggests the exchange has been under investigation in France since early 2022.
According According to a report published in the French daily, Le Monde, the French arm of the crypto exchange has been the subject of a preliminary investigation, carried out by the Finance Judicial Investigation Service under the direction of the specialized interregional jurisdiction of Paris, since February 2019. 2022.
The Paris Prosecutor's Office would have cited "acts of illegal exercise of the function of service provider on digital assets (PSAN), and acts of aggravated money laundering, by participating in investment, concealment, conversion operations, the latter carried out by perpetrators of profit-generating crimesโ, as the basis of the investigation.
Binance reportedly failed to follow or comply with Know Your Customer procedures that monitor users and potential money laundering activities.
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The crypto exchange was reportedly unable to obtain an operating license and illegally offered its services to French clients. Since 2019, crypto exchanges are required to get approval from the Authority for Financial Markets (AMF) to operate. However, Binance, which has been operating in France since 2020, only received AMF approval in May 2022.
A Binance spokesperson told Cointelegraph:
โBinance invests a considerable amount of time and resources to cooperate with law enforcement globally. We abide by all laws in France, just as we do in all other markets in which we operate. We will not comment on the details of law enforcement or regulatory investigations, except to say that information about our users is kept secure and is only provided to government officials upon receipt of proper documented justification."
The reports of the investigation in France emerged within weeks of a lawsuit against the cryptocurrency exchange in the United States. The United States Securities and Exchange Commission has filed 13 charges against the American subsidiary of the crypto exchange, Binance.US, and CEO Changpeng Zhao.
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