![]() ![]() “The idea was that Binance was a red entity, and Eqonex was clean and green,” a person with knowledge of the situation told Forbes.īut the partnership quickly collapsed, leaving Eqonex bankrupt and delisted from the Nasdaq. crypto custodian license, according to claims made in the class action lawsuit. Given multiple failed efforts to appease British regulators, Binance planned to use Eqonex to piggyback off Digivault’s U.K. Jonathan Farnell, then CEO of Bifinity and head of Binance U.K., was named Eqonex’s CEO. ![]() “It is with great excitement and enthusiasm that we enter this partnership,” Hai said. In a splashy press release touting the firm as Binance’s “official fiat-to-crypto payments provider,” Hai said the company's aim was to "accelerate mass crypto adoption." The press release also announced it had acquired a stake in a Nasdaq-listed firm called Eqonex, a company that owned a U.K.-licensed crypto custodian called Digivault. In March 2022, Hai took charge as president of the Lithuanian company when it relaunched as Bifinity. She is one of several women to ascend to Binance’s highest ranks, including Guangying Chen (the company’s unofficial CFO, a recent Forbes investigation found) and Binance’s cofounder, Hi Ye, with whom Zhao has children. Hai had joined Binance to lead its charity operations in 2018 and became the face of the company’s charm offensive on global regulators. (Binance did not make Hai available for comment.) crypto license had failed under the direction of an executive named Helen Hai, a Chinese-born British citizen who is married to Daming Zhu, an early Binance investor and personal friend of Zhao’s, according to multiple former Binance employees. The company’s previous attempts to gain a U.K. While the Lithuanian entity primarily processed customer credit card transactions, it also became integral to Binance’s effort to gain a foothold in the U.K. Binance’s spokesperson Matthews said the company “is not required to be licensed by the Bank of Lithuania as Bifinity does not hold, manage, or collect client funds or issue electronic money.” First incorporated in 2020 as Binance UAB, Lithuanian authorities were initially skeptical: The country’s central bank issued a warning against the company in July 2021, alleging that it was offering "unlicensed investment services." But Binance found a workaround: Instead, it registered the company as a virtual currency exchange with the country’s business registry, a process that doesn’t require a license from the central bank as long as the firm doesn’t hold any customer funds.Ī spokesperson for the Bank of Lithuania told Forbes that Bifinity “is not supervised or licensed” by the bank. Such issues have only increased Binance’s reliance on its Lithuanian operation. Binance said at the time it intended to “defend our platform vigorously.” The SEC’s allegations include that Binance misused customer funds and diverted them to a trading entity controlled by Zhao. It is under investigation for fraud and anti-money laundering in France, and last month the SEC accused the company and Zhao of widespread fraud and filed more than a dozen charges against both. Many payment providers, such as Paysafe - which processed its Euro-denominated bank transfers - are now dropping Binance as it faces headwinds in Europe, and around the globe. “They set it up in a place with weaker standards, and surprise, surprise, there's gambling in Casablanca.”Īnil Kashyap, advisor to the European Central Bank. Responding to questions about the payments to Zhao’s bank account, accusations of commingling customer funds and the private jet, Matthews denied the transactions indicated anything untoward, telling Forbes that “auditors issued unqualified opinions regarding 20 financial statements.” He added that Bifinity operates “in an open and transparent manner” and “manages the relationships with third party regulated payment providers and banks.” Simon Matthews, Binance’s PR director for Europe, told Forbes that the company “will defend position vigorously” against the class action claims. Bifinity, Zhao and his executives are now being accused in a previously unreported class-action lawsuit of making "materially false” statements that artificially inflated the publicly listed firm’s stock price. But the effort, which involved acquiring a Nasdaq-listed company with a British crypto license, collapsed. In addition, Forbes found, Bifinity was crucial to Binance’s attempts to get regulated in the United Kingdom - a key goal for Zhao that would have given Binance coveted legitimacy in a global financial hub. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |