The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has alleged in a new court document that Binance CEO Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao and Guangying ‘Helina’ Chen, Binance’s back-office and financial manager, received billions of dollars of customer funds through their holding company. According to testimony delivered by Sachin Verma, an accountant employed by the SEC, the funds were sent to firms controlled by Zhao via an intermediary holding company known as Key Vision Development Limited.
The SEC has been unable to determine why Zhao’s entity, which was purportedly trading on the Binance.US Platform using his personal funds, would have acted as a ‘pass-through’ account for billions of dollars of Binance Platforms customers’ funds. Verma’s forensic analysis of the bank statements of Binance and Zhao’s web of companies revealed that $12 billion was sent to Zhao and $162 million to a Guangying Chen-controlled company in Singapore.
The SEC has been investigating Binance.US since at least 2020 and alleges that Binance held custody of its U.S. affiliate’s assets until December 2022, despite assuring regulators and the public they were separate entities. Binance has publicly denied mixing customer deposits and company funds, and has said that Merit Peak is a vehicle for CZ to trade his self-made wealth. A court date has been set for June 13 regarding the restraining order.