Reuters: US DOJ has been investigating Changpeng Zhao for over a year

Cryptocurrency trading platform Binance, which has been actively pursued by regulators lately, turns out to have been under the supervision of US law enforcement agencies for more than a year.

The Ministry of Justice at the end of 2020 required the Binance crypto exchange to voluntarily submit internal documents related to checks on transactions for money laundering and the position of the CEO of the exchange, Changpeng Zhao, Reuters reports. 

It is specified that the US prosecutor's office asked the cryptocurrency company to submit for examination Zhao's correspondence with 12 heads of Binance divisions on issues related to the detection of illegal transactions and attracting customers under US jurisdiction. Law enforcement requested any company records with instructions that “documents must be destroyed, altered or removed from Binance files” or “transferred from the United States archive,” the report said.

Binance has been under scrutiny by the US authorities since 2021. In particular, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is investigating insider trading and market manipulation by the American division of the Binance US crypto exchange. The commission is trying to find out if the platform allowed the buying and selling of derivative financial instruments based on cryptocurrencies to US residents. If this is true, then the activity of the trading platform violates US law, since Binance is not registered with the CFTC. To better engage with regulators, the exchange has hired former IRS officials who have distinguished themselves in Silk Road and WEX cases as division heads.