Binance Hires Compliance Director, Expanding Team, As It Seeks To Ease Global Regulatory Concerns

Binance.com, not to be confused with Binance.us, has hired a new Compliance Director and plans to double its compliance team. This follows recent encounters with regulators in the — U.S., UK, the Cayman Islands, Singapore, and other countries, as regulatory pressure builds.

Bitboy Crypto reported, Binance is being targeted globally by countries for failing all these years to regulate their exchange and offering in the eyes of regulators, “illegal future contracts,” and more recently, tokenized synthetic stock trading.

Now, Binance is trying to appease regulators, first by installing CipherTrace, blockchain analysis Traveler software into its exchange for compliance with Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) travel rules. Second, by hiring a Compliance Director to ensure the exchange follows compliance laws going forward and on top of that doubling its compliance team.

Binance has announced that it has hired Jonathan Farnell, who previously worked for the popular trading app, eToro, as the exchange’s new director of compliance.

Farnell previously headed eToro Money UK as director of compliance, and he served as head of compliance at eToroX. “The crypto industry is fast-paced and faces unique challenges and I look forward to helping Binance grow in the next stage of its journey,” Farnell said in a statement.

Farnell is being penned by Coindesk as the “UK version of Brian Brooks,” the current head of Binance U.S. who previously served as the Acting Comptroller of the Currency from May 29, 2020, until January 14th, 2021 when he was replaced.

In addition to Farnell, Binance has plans to double its compliance team by year’s end, which will be commanded by the exchange’s new Director of Compliance according to Reuters.

British banks like Barclays, NatWest, and UK’s Nationwide building society have reportedly been blocking customers from using their debit and credit cards to make payments to Binance. While the latter Nationwide is reviewing its policy on cryptocurrency altogether stating they would “monitor the situation regarding cryptocurrencies,” Decrypt reported.

Binance.US has also hired a former regulator amid regulatory scrutiny for the overall international business. Binance’s independent U.S. subsidiary Binance.US has hired Manuel Alvarez as the Chief Administrator. Alvarez will report to Brooks, the current CEO of Binance.US. Brooks assured Bloomberg in a recent interview, that Binance.US is separate from Binance Holdings Ltd, with the only thing common among the two being the founder, crypto billionaire Changpeng Zhao. However, Brooks states that Binance.US  has been registered under the name of Binance, not Binance Holdings Ltd. He added, that Binance.US has licensed the name and some technology from Binance.

It seems that Binance as a whole is attempting to reshape its image after being the go-to exchange for avoiding KYC to trade from for years. However, and you may call this FUD, Binance does have an open case with the U.S. regarding an investigation into Binance Holdings Ltd. by the Justice Department (DOJ) and Internal Revenue Service (IRS.) Which with both the DOJ and IRS involved it can be assumed that the U.S. is probing whether U.S. citizens used the exchange to dodge paying taxes on gains or as the system puts it, “money laundering.” They may also be investigating whether Binance allowed activities like money laundering not just from U.S. citizens but anyone around the world. It’s unclear if Binance U.S. is tied up in the investigation into Binance Holdings Ltd due to CZ’s own involvement as a founder.

Binance Ltd is also under investigation by Thailand’s SEC, for allegedly operating a digital asset business without a license. “In so doing, Binance has solicited the Thai public and investors to use its services, either via its website or Facebook Page: Binance Thai Community,” Thailand’s SEC commented. It’s unclear and it’s too soon to tell how these cases will pan out for the exchange.

Bitcoin is currently trading at [FIAT: $33,413.15] DOWN -2.4% in the last 24 hours according to Coingecko at the time of this report.