Former Binance.US executives testified to the SEC
Catherine Cowley and Brian Brooks testified to the SEC about their experiences managing the U.S. division of the leading cryptocurrency exchange
Former Binance.US CEOs Catherine Coley and Brian Brooks testified to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) before it sued Binance.US partner Binance.com, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, Bloomberg writes. Some of the testimony from former U.S. executives was included in the regulator's lawsuit.
Among other allegations, the regulator alleged that the platforms mixed assets and that the global company remotely managed Binance.US and influenced its business even though it had no right to do so.
In 2019, Catherine Cowley became Binance.US's first chief executive officer and resigned unexpectedly two years later. She said that Binance.US was launched using the resources and personnel of the global platform Binance.com, which was operating in China at the time.
This was one of the "major challenges" for her, Coley said, because much of the information was in Chinese. She noted that the data "had significant opacity" for her, and added that she had not received any help from Zhao in moving it.
Brooks also testified to the SEC. He said that Binance.US relied on liquidity provided by investment funds affiliated with Zhao, with Zhao himself providing the platform with $10 million in initial funding.
The day after the filing of the lawsuit, in which the regulator also accuses Zhao of misusing customer funds, the SEC demanded that the assets of Binance's U.S. unit be blocked in order to protect user funds. That demand is scheduled to be heard on June 13.
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