DOJ Recommends 36-Month Sentence for Former Binance CEO

US DOJ Seeks Three-Year Jail Term for Former Binance CEO Zhao

The US Department of Justice recommended a 36-month prison sentence for Changpeng Zhao, the former chief executive officer of Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange.

The sentence “will not just send a message to Zhao but also to the world,” the DOJ wrote in a court filing on Tuesday, adding the price for violating US law “must be significant to effectively punish Zhao for his criminal acts and to deter others.”

Do Kwon, Terraform Labs Should Get $5.3B Fine, SEC Tells Court

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has asked a New York court to impose $5.3 billion in fines on Terraform Labs and co-founder Do Kwon for their role in the $40 billion implosion of the Terra ecosystem in 2022.

Terraform Labs and Kwon were found liable on civil fraud charges earlier this month, when a Manhattan jury concluded that they had misled investors about the stability of their so-called “algorithmic” native stablecoin, Terra USD (UST), and the use cases for the Terra blockchain.

In the SEC’s motion for final judgment, filed two weeks after the conclusion of the trial, the regulator is requesting that Terraform Labs and Kwon pay $4.74 billion in disgorgement and prejudgment interest, as well as a collective $520 million in civil penalties: $420 million from Terraform Labs and $100 million from Kwon’s pocket.

Jailed Binance Exec’s Bail Hearing in Nigeria Postponed Until May 17

Detained Binance executive Tigran Gambaryan will remain in prison in Nigeria until at least May 17, following an Abuja court’s ruling to postpone a scheduled bail hearing until after he is tried on money laundering charges.

Gambaryan, an American citizen and former Internal Revenue Service (IRS) special agent, is Binance’s head of financial crime compliance. He and a colleague, Binance’s regional manager for Africa Nadeem Anjarwalla, a dual U.K.-Kenyan national, were arrested and detained on Feb. 26 after flying to Nigeria’s capital city of Abuja to meet with the Nigerian government at the government’s request.

The Nigerian government had previously accused Binance of enabling currency speculation that crashed its currency, the naira. At first, Nigerian officials denied that Gambaryan and Anjarwalla were under arrest, but the pair were put under house arrest upon arrival and, along with Binance, charged with money laundering and tax evasion a month later.

Nigeria Directs Entities to Identify Those Dealing Crypto With Bybit, KuCoin, OKX and Binance

The Central Bank of Nigeria issued a directive on Tuesday asking financial institutions to identify persons or entities transacting in or operating with Bybit, KuCoin, OKX and Binance, according to a letter seen by CoinDesk.

The letter, addressed to Deposit Money Banks (DMBs), Non-Bank Financial Institutions (NBFls), Other Financial Institutions (OFIs) and members of the public, also cautioned and reminded the institutions that dealing in cryptocurrencies or facilitating payments for cryptocurrency exchanges is prohibited.

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Notably, the letter said any perpetrator or “suspected agent” secretly working with all cryptocurrency platforms, “buying and selling USDT illegally,” will be arrested. It is the “duty of the Central Bank of Nigeria to investigate economic problems in the country.”

Supreme Court SEC Disclosure Ruling Confusing for Courts, Markets

The court’s decision that only “half-truths” are actionable whereas “pure omissions” aren’t means that investors, lawyers, and judges now must analyze Item 303 violations carefully to categorize them.

If that supposedly bright-line distinction evades the average reader, the justices provided a quaint analogy: “The difference between a pure omission and a half-truth is the difference between a child not telling his parents he ate a whole cake and telling them he had dessert.”

The ruling doesn’t acknowledge that, because Item 303 requires disclosing known trends, an omission is a half-truth that implies all known trends have been disclosed (or that there are no known trends). Or, to take the court’s analogy, if the parents ask their child what dessert he or she ate and the child doesn’t respond, any parent will agree the child’s silence was an attempt to mislead.

UK Firms Told to ‘Urgently Review’ Green Claims Amid Crackdown

Firms operating in the UK are being advised to go through any products and services around which some sort of sustainability claim has been made, to ensure they’re not in the crosshairs of a regulatory crackdown that’s due to take effect at the end of next month.

The Financial Conduct Authority’s plan to move ahead with anti-greenwashing rules has far-reaching implications for British businesses, and leaves them with only limited time to shield themselves from potential regulatory action, according to industry associations and consultants advising businesses.