WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Activity at Binance was a pretty clear case of evasion and U.S. authorities needed to step in aggressively and as quickly as possible, the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said on Tuesday.
The U.S. agency sued Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, on Monday.
“This seemed to be a pretty clear case of evasion and something that we needed to step in aggressively with and do it as quickly as possible because this was an ongoing fraud – going back to 2019 – and ongoing violation of the Commodity Exchange Act,” CFTC Chairman Rostin Behnam said in an interview with CNBC.
Behnam said Binance was a common enterprise comprised of dozens and dozens of entities scattered across the globe.
“Not having a headquarters, not having a location is not going to prevent the CFTC from coming after you,” he said.
Benham said it was clear that control of the enterprise came from Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao and there was clear documentation of an intent to evade the law.
“So we’re going to vigorously continue and fight this case in court,” he told the CFTC.
(Reporting by Doina Chiacu; editing by Susan Heavey and Jason Neely)