Binance CEO denies involvement in money laundering on the WazirX exchange

What’s new? Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao has denied allegations against the company related to an investigation into money laundering on the Indian crypto exchange WazirX. He stressed that Binance has no financial ties to the platform and does not own capital in its parent company Zanmai Labs. In this, Binance representatives reported back in 2019 about buying WazirX. On his Twitter, Zhao stressed that the deal was “never completed,” and that Binance provides WazirX with only “wallet services” and is not responsible for managing the Indian platform.

The WazirX founding team maintained control of the operations of the platform. We (Binance) were never give data or control of users, KYC, etc. We would love to work with ED to fix these issues in WazirX.— CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) August 5, 2022

What else did Zhao say? He acknowledged that the allegations against the service are “concerning.” Zhao added that Binance has continually cooperated with “enforcement agencies all around the world” and has offered its assistance to the Directorate of Enforcement (ED) of India.

Details of the case. Nischal Shetty, Managing Director at Zanmain Labs, was questioned as a result of the investigation. The executive claims that Binance handles most of the transactions for WazirX. Law enforcement believes the suspects are giving “contradictory and ambiguous answers” to confuse the investigation.

In addition, ED believes that the cryptocurrency platform failed to implement robust know your customer and anti-money laundering (KYC/AML) measures. Investigators also highlighted the loose transaction controls between WazirX and Binance and the lack of records about them on the blockchain. All of this is believed to have contributed to the laundering of funds by 16 fintech companies. It is noted that due to weak regulatory measures, the Indian exchange cannot provide reports on missing crypto assets.

In early August, India’s economic intelligence agency suspected WazirX of laundering $350 million. In connection with the suspicions, ED representatives froze some of the exchange’s assets worth 646,70 million Indian rupees ($8,16 million).