The world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance Holdings Ltd., has hired a former white-collar prosecutor at the Department of Justice to represent the firm in the Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit, according to a court filing on Thursday.
(Bloomberg) — The world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance Holdings Ltd., has hired a former white-collar prosecutor at the Department of Justice to represent the firm in the Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit, according to a court filing on Thursday.
M. Kendall Day will appear in the SEC case as counsel for Binance, the filing said. The partner in the Washington DC office of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher was the former acting deputy assistant attorney general at the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division, where he worked for 15 years, according to his biography on the Gibson Dunn website.
Earlier this month, the SEC accused Binance, its Chief Executive Officer Changpeng Zhao and another exchange he owns, Binance.US, with mishandling customer funds, misleading investors and regulators, and breaking securities rules. It also asked for the repatriation of crypto belonging to US customers.
The Justice Department has been among other US agencies probing Binance.
At the Justice Department, Day was also chief of the department’s Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section. In that role, Day had nationwide supervisory authority over the department’s money laundering program, including any money-laundering charges, deferred prosecution agreements and non-prosecution agreements involving financial institutions, according to Gibson Dunn’s site.
Binance and Day did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In recent weeks, Binance and Binance.US have been beefing up their stable of lawyers for the SEC case. The company also hired former SEC enforcement co-director George Canellos.
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