13 charges are being made against the exchange in a lawsuit

The S.E.C. vs. Binance.com: FTX is not awash trading in the United States

The suit says that while Binance told investors it was going to implement controls on market manipulation, it did not actually do that. “Thus, Defendants failed to satisfy basic requirements of registered exchanges—to have rules designed to prevent fraudulent and manipulative acts and the capacity to carry out that purpose,” the suit says. There was no such thing as a monitor for “wash trading,” where a trader illegally buys an asset from an account they already control, inflating the price of the asset.

So far, the biggest target has been FTX, a company that collapsed in spectacular fashion and faces a slew of criminal charges that threaten to send its founder and former CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, to prison for over 100 years.

Since 2019, Binance has run a separate exchange for customers in the United States, known as Binance. To obey the U.S. laws. As such, U.S.-based investors aren’t supposed to use Binance’s global platform, known as Binance.com.

Most recently, in March, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, accused the company of violating the Commodity Exchange Act and several CFTC regulations.

But in today’s filing, the S.E.C. says the company and its chief executive “subverted their own controls to secretly allow high-value U.S. customers” to trade on its international exchange.

The company has stated publicly that the US operations were controlled by two subsidiaries, however according to the S.E.C., that has been more lies than they have said.

In speeches and congressional testimony, Gensler has called on crypto companies to register with the S.E.C. In today’s filing, the S.E.C. says Binance failed to do that.

The defendants “chose not to register, so they could evade the critical regulatory oversight designed to protect investors and markets,” the S.E.C said, in its suit.