Binance France chief brushed off concerns days before police visit

PARIS — Days earlier French constabulary visited Binance's Paris office, the crypto exchange's apical French enforcement dismissed concerns astir U.S. regulatory charges impacting Binance's different operations, comparing them to the flapping of a butterfly's wings.

French prosecutors person opened a probe into "aggravated money-laundering" by the crypto exchange, Le Monde reported Friday, adding successful a connection that the institution was besides being probed implicit operating an unauthorized exchange.

Just days earlier the raid, CNBC asked Binance France president David Prinçay if helium was acrophobic astir charges from the apical 2 U.S. fiscal regulators against the exchange.

"I don't attraction what happened successful the U.S.," Prinçay retorted, speaking astatine the Proof of Talk acme successful Paris. "We are successful Europe, with a French regulator, a European regulator."

Prinçay insisted that Binance.US assets were separated from the planetary exchange, an assertion besides made by the exchange's ineligible team. The Securities and Exchange Commission, which charged Binance past week with 13 securities charges, disagrees, arguing that Binance idiosyncratic funds are astatine "significant risk" of formation owed to laminitis Changpeng Zhao's alleged ownership of an interlocking acceptable of Binance-related companies.

Binance France's main called the U.S. allegations of commingling a "car crash."

"The lone concerns I person close present is that we look excessively overmuch astatine the car clang and not to drive," Prinçay said.

Binance's founder, Changpeng Zhao, dismissed the constabulary connection and reporting arsenic "FUD," claiming it was a "surprise on-site" inspection that was "the norm."

"We volition not remark connected the specifics of instrumentality enforcement oregon regulatory investigations but to accidental that accusation astir our users is held securely and lone provided to authorities officials upon receipt of documented due justification," the speech said successful different statement.

Prinçay did not instantly respond to a petition for remark astir the constabulary visit.

Binance faces implicit a twelve charges from the SEC and a similar slate of allegations from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. A reported Department of Justice probe is besides ongoing into the exchange, according to an SEC complaint.