According to sources, former Binance.US CEO, Catherine Coley, is in the list of evidence in the ongoing case between the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the firm. The CEO is listed as “BAM CEO A” in the list of witnesses for the SEC against the exchange.
However, sources suggest Coley’s statement which has resurfaced as an exhibit in the ongoing case is an old testimony from last year. Notably, at that time, the exchange was under SEC’s investigation for insider trading.
Reportedly, Coley’s 2022 testimony was quite long, as the selections that constitute the mentioned exhibit in the case have page numbers that range from 135 to 336. Those passages mainly concern the separation of Binance and Binance.US, which was the subject of major allegations in the SEC suit.
It was revealed that the service-level agreements between Binance and Binance.US were a master services agreement, a wallet custody agreement, a software license agreement and a trademark agreement. Coley was the Binance.US CEO from its founding in 2019 until her resignation in 2021.
As recounted in the SEC suit, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) was involved in Coley’s hiring, but she quickly became frustrated with Binance.US’ lack of independence. The suit quotes her from the 2022 testimony:
I wanted full independence of everything, but that wouldn’t necessarily be possible or be possible at that time, given our reliance on some of those components [in four service-level agreements with Binance.com].
Owing to the increasing pressure from the SEC, Binance.US is going to remove select BTC and BUSD advanced trading pairs on Thursday. Notably, the original delisting announcement included a large number of USDT trading pairs but the list was updated a couple of hours ago with:
Following community feedback, Binance.US will no longer remove any USDT Advanced Trading pairs. All cryptocurrencies and USDT pairs remain available to trade. Only select BTC and BUSD advanced trading pairs below will be removed.
Reportedly, the list of Bitcoin trading pairs to be delisted included ATOM/BTC, BCH/BTC, DOT/BTC, LRC/BTC, MANA/BTC, UNI/BTC, VET/BTC, and XTZ/BTC. It also stated that two Binance USD listings would be removed including the HBAR/BUSD and ONE/BUSD. It added that it was streamlining its ‘Buy, Sell & Convert’ offering and paused its OTC Trading Portal.
Additionally, Binance.US and its CEO have also been hit by a summons from a US court on the behalf of the SEC. The court addressed the summons to his residence in Malta, where Binance was previously headquartered. The document asks the CEO to respond within 21 days. Following is a snap of the court summon:
On Monday, the SEC filed a lawsuit against Binance claiming several stablecoins to be unregistered securities. According to reports, the SEC has filed 13 charges against the exchange, including unregistered offers and sales of the stablecoins – BNB and BUSD, its services namely the Simple Earn and BNB vault products, and its staking program.
Additionally, the regulator claims in its suit that Binance failed to register its online platform as an exchange or a broker-dealer clearing agency. However, the classification of these assets is still in grey area as the Congress has not rolled out any legislation regarding the asset class.
On Tuesday, the SEC also filed an emergency motion to freeze its assets to “prevent the dissipation of available assets for any judgment.” However, the firm called the motion “unwarranted,” and that it was filed to gain an advantage in litigation after the exchange spent the past week in dialogue with the SEC. It also stated its disappointment but willingness to go to court to clear its name.