[HN Gopher] US Seeks More Than $4B from Binance to End Criminal ...
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US Seeks More Than $4B from Binance to End Criminal Case
Author : crypt1d
Score : 88 points
Date : 2023-11-20 17:52 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| Why would they even negotiate with the United States? It's like
| if I ran an online business from the US who happened to have
| customers in Indonesia and I was breaking Indonesian laws. As
| long as I never planned on going to Indonesia, why would I care?
|
| Fun fact: many years ago I did run an online business and I did
| break laws in other countries that I never plan to go to. I never
| broke US law.
| tw04 wrote:
| You think he's safe living in Canada if he's found guilty for
| massive fraud in the US? Or you think China, who has also been
| cracking down on finance in their own country, is going to
| protect this nobody whose platform actively works against their
| financial controls?
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| I mentioned he's Canadian because he's not American. He
| doesn't live in Canada though and I think it's been a while
| since he has.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| > whose platform actively works against their financial
| controls
|
| Depends on who is going against their financial controls.
| Obviously if you're the right person, going around them is
| permitted. Just don't be the wrong person going around them!
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| You may want to transit the airspace of the US or one of their
| allies in the future.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| That is a good point.
| hiatus wrote:
| I know Belarus has ordered at least one plane out of the sky
| for an arrest, but has the US?
| notyourwork wrote:
| Has it? Who knows? Could it, yes. That is the point OP was
| making.
| robin_reala wrote:
| Of course. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_ground
| ing_incident
| Scoundreller wrote:
| From what I'm reading, nobody ordered a plane out of the
| sky, but several countries (suddenly) excluded a plane
| from their sky.
|
| Of course, if you're flying over a landlocked country,
| and every neighbour blocks you from their airspace, you
| don't have many options. (Not that this quite happened,
| but looked to be going in that trajectory).
| joshuaissac wrote:
| > nobody ordered a plane out of the sky, but several
| countries (suddenly) excluded a plane from their sky
|
| Suddenly withdrawing permission for a plane to fly
| through your sky, after it has already taken off and does
| not have enough fuel to take an alternative route, has
| the same effect as ordering it out of the sky.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Who said they didn't have enough fuel for an alternative
| route? Their intended destination was Bolivia from
| Moscow. Can't do that without a refuel ~midway. The next
| day they did a refuel in Canary Islands (Spain).
| oskarkk wrote:
| Not exactly - in the Belarus case the plane was in the
| Belarusian airspace and had to land in Belarus (and then
| two passengers were arrested). If Belarus had revoked
| permission before the plane entered its airspace, and it
| had to land in Ukraine or Poland due to insufficient
| fuel, nothing would have happened to those passengers.
| LikesPwsh wrote:
| Dollar-denominated bank accounts are a bigger factor for
| binance.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| USD is their biggest market.
| acdha wrote:
| How many countries and financial institutions will do business
| with someone the US government has put on a watchlist? Now
| consider that block chains are designed to make it easy for
| governments to control so even if I'm some guy in Nigeria my
| calculations for any transaction have to include a discount
| rate for the reduced number of people who will accept a
| transaction linked back to a sanctioned organization. Imagine
| how different the 1920s would have been if every bank, hotel,
| restaurant, etc. in Miami knew that the dollars you were paying
| came from a Cuban casino and were subject to criminal charges.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| https://archive.is/PPs7i/again?url=https://www.bloomberg.com...
| rich_sasha wrote:
| I know this is how the US operates, still it's weird to trade
| cash for criminal allegations. Especially when Binance has been
| so vilified.
|
| I'm not defending Binance, rather, it feels like the SEC rhetoric
| went past the point where a fine is appropriate.
|
| Unless they are only proposing it so they can't be accused of not
| giving them the same treatment that everyone else gets.
| pavlov wrote:
| It seems like the deal would be more like probation where
| Binance would remain monitored after paying the fine:
|
| _" If Binance and the DOJ agree on a deferred-prosecution-
| agreement, the Justice Department would file a criminal
| complaint against the company. The US would not go forward with
| a prosecution as long as the company meets prescribed
| conditions, which usually include paying a substantial penalty
| and agreeing to a detailed statement of facts outlining its
| wrongdoing. A process would be set up to monitor the company's
| compliance."_
|
| Also there might be personal criminal charges against CZ:
|
| _" Negotiations between the Justice Department and Binance
| include the possibility that its founder Changpeng Zhao would
| face criminal charges in the US under an agreement to resolve
| the probe into alleged money laundering, bank fraud and
| sanctions violations, according to people familiar with the
| discussions._
|
| _" Zhao, also known as "CZ," is residing in the United Arab
| Emirates, which doesn't have an extradition treaty with the US,
| but that doesn't prevent him from coming voluntarily."_
|
| LOL at the "coming voluntarily" part though...
| inhumantsar wrote:
| Residing in the UAE also wouldn't prevent extraordinary
| rendition should it come to that...
| CrzyLngPwd wrote:
| Just say kidnapping. It's not like it's North America's
| first time.
| arcticbull wrote:
| No need to go that far. The lack of an extradition treaty
| doesn't preclude extradition. Instead of having a
| formalized process in place it would have to be done case
| by case. This is a common misconception about extradition
| treaties in general.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| And sometimes you're safe despite the existence of an
| extradition treaty. France has a bunch of extradition
| treaties but they'll only let them be used against non-
| citizens.
| ender341341 wrote:
| A lot of countries will only really extradite non-
| citizens, especially the more powerful they are.
| fredgrott wrote:
| it's oh UEA you want protection of your oil tanker traffic
| from Iran missile hits, guess what let's trade....
| robocat wrote:
| Feels like extortion.
|
| The Mafia's bigger brother.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I know this is how the US operates, still it's weird to trade
| cash for criminal allegations.
|
| I would imagine that the US is not unique in either (1) making
| corporations liable for crime, or (2) having the principal
| sanction against the corporation itself for any crime be either
| monetary or a combination of monetary sanction and injunction
| or similar behavioral controls.
| echelon wrote:
| You can't imprison or kill [1] a company.
|
| You can impose civil or criminal penalties on the directors,
| but the shareholders are also (perhaps rightly) punished when
| you impose fines.
|
| A government can also seize a company's assets and
| redistribute them to recover costs, but in doing so you often
| dismantle the value.
|
| [1] (At least not in the same way you can impose capital
| punishment on a human.)
| advisedwang wrote:
| Lets say this goes to trial and Binance is convicted. What will
| the sentence be? A fine. Allowing them to pay now without the
| trial basically is like a plea deal (or pleading guilty for a
| reduced sentence). Presumably this is less than the DoJ thinks
| the fine+court costs would be if they went to trial.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > I know this is how the US operates, still it's weird to trade
| cash for criminal allegations.
|
| It's not just the US. Spain is accusing Shakira of financial
| fraud (spending more than 183 days over a year from 2012 to
| 2014 in Spain --for she had a spanish lover--, without paying
| her taxes in Spain) and she had to pay something like 16
| millions plus six months in jail but they recently settled on
| an additional 8 millions or something and no jail time.
|
| I mean: it's not exactly the same but they still traded cash
| for part of the sentence.
|
| P.S: Spain is also apparently now going after her for year
| 2018.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| I'd be much more concerned about what this offer indicates
| regarding the new goodies that the shadow side of the US
| government has leveraged out of Binance.
|
| In the long run, I'd wager the US government will be getting
| information and services worth a good deal more than
| USD4Billion out of Binance and ancillary organizations.
|
| Still, if you can make as much money as Binance has allegedly
| been making, and sure, sell out a few of your customers, but
| now you can keep all that money free and clear legally? That's
| a pretty good trade assuming you're not some privacy nut or
| anything.
|
| As a bonus, the shadow side of the US government will probably
| be pretty keen on protecting you from any of your less savory
| customers. Just so they can keep the whole thing rolling as
| long as possible.
|
| This could be a good outcome for Binance.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| $80 billion in profit and a $4 billion fine! American justice at
| its finest.
| gruez wrote:
| Did they really make $80 billion from the alleged wrongdoings?
| Or is that just their total profit?
| TrapLord_Rhodo wrote:
| The $80B in profit is a random number the OP through out.
|
| Most likely the exchange is making between $2-$4B in profit a
| year (With bull markets around $12-$14B a year). However,
| with such a small team and the team being paid is bUSD, i
| suspect most of their revenue is pure profit.
|
| Also, Binance executives are tied to Tether ($87B market cap)
| with around $8-12B in profit per year, and BNB ($39B market
| cap) $600-$800M per year, makes it one of the most profitable
| companies in the world.
|
| So although $80B came from no where (And the real number is
| closer to around $20B a year with a market cap of $110B, $4B
| is nothing for them.)
| chollida1 wrote:
| Can you explain how you came to that number?
| costco wrote:
| Wow, I was expecting about half that. I think this would be the
| second largest DPA ever. BNP Paribas paid $9 billion, Airbus paid
| $3.9 billion, Wells Fargo $3 billion, ...
|
| I wonder if the SEC/CFTC stuff will be resolved too. That's the
| deal BitMEX got but this case is way more substantial than just
| not registering as a money transmitter.
| dmix wrote:
| Maybe it's an opening bid that could be negotiated down to 50%.
| Half kidding.
| ecommerceguy wrote:
| 4 billion and continue being an inflation sink (dollar
| destruction) and the deal with the US gov lets the scam continue.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _the deal with the US gov lets the scam continue_
|
| Outside America. Which, like, seems fine.
| wmf wrote:
| It's not really though. US people log in to Binance through
| VPNs and get scammed.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _US people log in to Binance through VPNs and get
| scammed_
|
| Literally the entire point of this case. DoJ seems to want
| CZ, personally, and for Binance to promise to root out
| Americans using it through a VPN. If they comply, the
| company can continue operating in others' markets while
| using the U.S. financial system.
| purpleblue wrote:
| Ahhh, so I guess this really was just a shakedown after all, like
| some banana republic despot. Color me stupid for thinking that
| the US cared about law and order and not about making money
| through the justice system.
| CrzyLngPwd wrote:
| So, in the USA, you can do wrongs and then buy your way out of
| it, such that doing wrong and the resulting fines are just a cost
| of doing business however you see fit?
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| Sounds like freedom to me :D
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _you can do wrongs and then buy your way out of it_
|
| Did you miss the part where they're still wanting to criminally
| charge Zhao?
| 0xDEADFED5 wrote:
| I don't know why you're being downvoted, because the answer is
| mostly yes.
| Yizahi wrote:
| After a certain threshold, financial crime is rebranded as
| "lobbying" and is rewarded instead of punished.
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(page generated 2023-11-20 23:01 UTC)