Hacker News
Zhao's Binance Aided Trump Family Crypto Venture Before Pardon
pwlm
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The administration says CZ wasn't guilty and was persecuted by the previous administration. https://x.com/WatcherGuru/status/1981457002921677059
What really happened here?
pants2
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> As one compliance employee wrote, “we need a banner ‘is washing drug money too hard these days - come to binance we got cake for you.’”
“our stance is [n]ot to openly do business with Iran due to sanctions. … I understand that we still support [I]ranian customers but that has to be done non-openly.”
“we are servicing [them] but non-public. … [the CEO of Binance] knows also. And allows it.”
Message from the CCO to the CEO: “we currently have users from sanction[ed] countries … if fincen or ofac has concrete evidence we have sanction[ed] users, they might try to investigate or blow it up big on worldstage.”
https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/binance-and-ceo-plea...
pants2
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So while the fines/jail were much harsher on Binance than other tradfi offenders, I think most would have rather seen someone from HSBC go to jail for laundering cartel money, vs CZ getting pardoned.
But if the 'ol "slap on the wrist" treated crypto similarly to tradfi, CZ would not have gone to jail - i.e. Binance was unfairly targeted by the previous administration.