Authorities around the world are not happy with Binance

The Binance KYC is not yet in order. That’s what Reuters writers say in an article about the largest crypto exchange.

At Binance, from the start in 2017, you could buy and sell bitcoin quite easily without identifying yourself. In the meantime, the requirements are becoming stricter to comply with local rules. According to Reuters, research has shown that Binance is not doing enough to prevent money laundering.

No matter what you think about money laundering and identification rules, most countries have strict rules for crypto exchanges. An organization like Binance has to deal with that. That won’t go away either for the time being. Politicians and regulators worldwide are trying to get a grip on the growing ecosystem around bitcoin.

Reuters journalists said they were talking to former Binance employees. Consultants and business partners were also consulted.

According to the article, Binance does not always cooperate with requests from governments. For example, the German police and various national regulators would not receive an answer to requests concerning fraudsters and terrorists.

The exchange has received multiple warnings from regulators in Singapore, among others. Japan and the United Kingdom. According to Reuters, Binance manually adjusted their own money laundering alert from 7 countries. Russia and Ukraine are cited as examples. In this way, the exchange was able to continue to provide services in these countries.

The crypto exchange has received multiple warnings about its operations from regulators around the world about its operations, including in Singapore, Japan, the Cayman Islands and the UK, while avoiding setting up a global headquarters. According to Reuters, Binance acted against its own money laundering risk warnings for at least seven countries in 2020. Specifically, ratings for Russia and Ukraine were “manually” lowered from “extreme” to “high” so that the exchange could continue to offer services there, Reuters said.

As a company, Binance is increasingly in the news. The trading volume is gigantic and the crypto exchange has customers all over the world. Due to the structure of the organization, it does not yet have an official headquarters. According to many regulators, the know-Your-customer procedures also leave something to be desired.

Director Changpeng Zhao responds on Twitter. He suspects the people of Reuters that they have spoken to the wrong people. Binance has been frequently addressed by local regulators and financial watchdogs worldwide in recent years. In many countries, the trading platform does not comply with local rules.

Binance is actively working to make regulators happy. Among other things, this means that Binance suddenly stopped supporting deposits with iDEAL and via a bank account in 2021.