By Michael Scott
The attorney representing plaintiffs seeking damages for Binance’s role in knowingly offering material support to the Hamas terrorist behind the October 7 linked the crypto exchange to the terrorist financing.
The attorney tied Binance and affiliate entities for intentionally overseeing Hamas receive material support alongside other terrorist organizations for several years. The legal expert indicated that the world’s largest Bitcoin and altcoin exchange by volume executed was intentionally helping fund the terrorists.
Binance Executives and Staff Knew Terrorist Financing to Hamas
The plaintiff’s attorney illustrated that the Richard Teng-led crypto exchange knowingly assisted in transferring money whose recipients were Hama terror group proxies. The attorney submitted that Binance oversaw the transactions for five years.
A review of the complaint filed on February 26 shows that one cannot overstate the contributions of Binance to funding the Hamas terrorists. The filing before Alabama’s Middle District Court attributes Binance with knowingly easing the money transfers to reach Hamas for over five years.
The complaint demonstrates that the money transfers to Hamas were executed under the watch of the chief executive and compliance personnel. Binance’s chief compliance executive is to blame alongside the rank-and-file staff who knew the platform’s operations were leveraged by users towards funding terrorist organizations, among them Hamas.
The plaintiff’s attorney revealed that the facilitation offered by Binance to the payments whose recipients constituted terrorist organizations was a widely known activity in the crypto firm. The attorney illustrates that the facilitation was ingrained to the extent that it featured as an everyday banter among the employees. Such demonstrates that the defendants had actual and constructive awareness that users leveraged the Binance infrastructure to execute illegal payments and remittances to foreign-based terrorist organizations.
The complaint reflects on the US Department of Justice (DOJ) revelation that one compliance staffer joked back in February 2019 about an invitation banner. The staffer argued that the company should create an invitation banner admitting it was washing drug money, and the platform was accommodating and offered a piece of cake for everyone.
Binance Failed in Obligation to Enforce Checks to Avert Terror Financing
The complaint reiterated the obligations of virtual currency exchanges to enforce the anti-money laundering checks. The filing faults Binance for nonenforcement of checks when its customers trade the dollars for fiat and digital currencies like banks. Binance failed to exercise the due diligence required during transactions to avert money laundering and illicit financing.
The International Legal Forum (ILF) filed the lawsuit alongside David Schoen from Goldfeder & Terry and the National Jewish Advocacy Center (NJAC). The filing cites survivors, relatives, and spouses of the victims hit by the Hamas-orchestrated massacre on October 7 terror attacks.
The NJAC director, Mark Goldfeder, illustrated that the defendants were deliberately enriching themselves by facilitating terrorists and financiers to have uninterrupted transactions. The move to lend its infrastructure to terrorist organizations in profit pursuit subjected individual lives to terror attacks. The defendant’s culpability is obvious, and the blood of the victims is on their hands.
Binance Role in Underwriting October 7 Atrocities
The ILF head Arsen Ostrovsky indicated that Binance effectively helped underwrite the October 7 atrocities, rape, and massacre. He added that the crypto exchange offered the platform that the terror groups coveted to fundraise for their heinous acts.
The complaint refers to the criminal convictions that Binance and founder Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty to in a $4.3 billion settlement for facilitating money laundering. The November settlement cited the defendants’ input overseeing unlicensed money transmission and contravention of existing sanctions.
The US Attorney General Merrick Garland alleged that Binance rose to the world’s largest crypto exchange and rode on its role in facilitating illicit financing. He supported the complaint due to the largest-ever penalty handed to a corporation in the US.
The complaint cites the US Treasury Department’s assertion that Binance violated the legal-backed obligations. It failed to implement programs that would have averted terrorist funding upon the detection of suspicious transactions benefiting the terrorists. The department identified the beneficiaries to include Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades, Al-Qaeda, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).