RAPPORT SPÉCIAL – Le géant de la cryptographie Binance a mélangé les fonds des clients et les revenus de l’entreprise, selon d’anciens initiés

23 mai (Reuters) – Le plus grand échange de crypto-monnaie au monde, Binance, a mélangé les fonds des clients avec les revenus de l’entreprise en 2020 et 2021, en violation des règles financières américaines qui exigent que l’argent des clients soit séparé, ont déclaré à Reuters trois sources proches du dossier.

L’une des sources, une personne connaissant directement les finances du groupe Binance, a déclaré que les sommes s’élevaient à des milliards de dollars et qu’un mélange se produisait presque quotidiennement dans les comptes détenus par le prêteur américain Silvergate Bank. Reuters n’a pas pu vérifier de manière indépendante les chiffres ou la fréquence. Mais l’agence de presse a examiné un dossier bancaire montrant que le 10 février 2021, Binance a mélangé 20 millions de dollars d’un compte d’entreprise avec 15 millions de dollars d’un compte qui a reçu de l’argent de clients.

Les flux d’argent chez Binance décrits par Reuters indiquent un manque de contrôles internes pour garantir que les fonds des clients soient clairement identifiables et séparés des revenus de l’entreprise, ont déclaré trois anciens régulateurs américains. Ils ont déclaré que le mélange de ces fonds mettait les actifs des clients en danger en masquant leurs allées et venues. Les clients de Binance ne devraient pas “avoir besoin d’un juricomptable pour savoir où se trouve leur argent”, a déclaré John Reed Stark, ancien chef du bureau de la Securities and Exchange Commission of Internet Enforcement.

Reuters n’a trouvé aucune preuve que l’argent des clients de Binance ait été perdu ou pris.

Le président de la SEC, Gary Gensler, a déclaré que de nombreuses bourses de crypto offrant des titres aux clients américains ne respectent pas les lois obligeant les courtiers enregistrés à protéger l’argent des clients en le séparant des actifs de l’entreprise. “Leurs modèles commerciaux ont tendance à être construits sur la prise de fonds des clients, en les mélangeant”, a-t-il déclaré lors d’un événement en mai. La SEC a lancé cette année une campagne de répression contre une série d’entreprises de cryptographie, mais n’a ciblé Binance avec aucune mesure d’application directe.

Binance a autorisé les clients américains à négocier sur sa plate-forme de 2019 à cette année malgré la prétention publique de restreindre l’accès aux Américains, a allégué la US Commodity Futures Trading Commission dans une plainte contre la bourse en mars. Binance a répondu dans un blog qu’il bloquait les utilisateurs américains.

Dans une déclaration à Reuters, Binance a nié avoir mélangé les dépôts des clients et les fonds de l’entreprise. « Ces comptes n’étaient pas utilisés pour accepter les dépôts des utilisateurs ; ils ont été utilisés pour faciliter les achats des utilisateurs” de crypto, a déclaré le porte-parole Brad Jaffe. “Il n’y a eu aucun mélange à aucun moment car il s’agit de fonds à 100% d’entreprise.” Lorsque les utilisateurs ont envoyé de l’argent sur le compte, a-t-il déclaré, ils ne déposaient pas de fonds mais achetaient le jeton cryptographique lié au dollar sur mesure de la bourse, BUSD. Ce processus était “exactement la même chose que d’acheter un produit d’Amazon”, a déclaré Jaffe.

Les anciens régulateurs américains ont déclaré à Reuters que l’explication de Binance était minée par les déclarations précédentes de la bourse aux clients selon lesquelles les transferts étaient des dépôts. À partir de la fin de 2020 et tout au long de 2021, le site Web de Binance a indiqué aux clients que leurs transferts en dollars étaient des “dépôts” qui seraient “crédités” sur leurs comptes de trading sous la forme de BUSD. Les clients ont été informés qu’ils pouvaient « retirer » leurs dépôts en dollars. Ces représentations ont créé l’attente que les fonds des clients seraient protégés de la même manière que les dépôts en espèces traditionnels, ont déclaré les anciens régulateurs.

“Ces représentations doivent être limpides à tout moment”, a déclaré Stark, l’ancien responsable de la SEC.

Reuters a demandé à Binance s’il avait déjà dit aux utilisateurs qu’il considérait leurs dépôts en dollars comme constituant des “achats”. Binance n’a fourni aucune preuve de cela et a déclaré que “le terme” dépôt “est un terme de communication, ce n’est pas une indication du traitement technique des fonds”.

Le mélange des fonds des clients et des entreprises peut être un précurseur de lourdes pertes pour les clients des sociétés financières. En décembre, la SEC et la CFTC ont allégué que le fondateur de l’échange cryptographique FTX effondré, Sam Bankman-Fried, avait pendant des années mélangé les fonds des clients de sa société commerciale et utilisé les fonds pour financer des investissements en capital-risque, des dons politiques et des achats immobiliers. Bankman-Fried a plaidé non coupable d’accusations de fraude et a déclaré qu’il n’avait sciemment mélangé aucun fonds.

LE BANQUIER DE BINANCE

Bank and company records for 2019-2021, seen by Reuters, and interviews with former insiders show that Binance used Silvergate Bank, the U.S. lender that collapsed in March, as the lynchpin of its financial operations. Silvergate, which is in the process of winding down operations, did not comment for this article.

Company revenues entered the Silvergate account of the exchange’s Cayman Islands holding firm, Binance Holdings, according to the sources and bank records. Customer dollars flowed into the Silvergate account of a firm in the Seychelles called Key Vision Development that was controlled by Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao.

One of the sources and a fourth person with direct knowledge of this account said Binance told Silvergate the Key Vision account’s purpose was to receive dollar deposits from non-U.S. customers. Jaffe, the Binance spokesperson, said this was inaccurate, without providing further details.

According to the sources and the February 2021 bank record seen by Reuters, Binance mixed customer money and company revenues in a third Silvergate account, belonging to a Zhao-controlled Cayman firm. Binance converted money from this third account into the dollar-linked token BUSD, according to the person with knowledge of Binance’s group finances and company messages. Blockchain records show Binance bought at least $18 billion of BUSD between January 2020 and December 2021.

The former regulators told Reuters that moving money between accounts and into crypto could have enabled Binance to shield funds from tax authorities in countries where it operates. The person with group-level knowledge of Binance said there was also another motivation: Zhao distrusted banks, once telling an interviewer of his concern that they could freeze his company’s accounts. So Binance turned cash into crypto, commingling customer funds and revenues in the process.

The new insights into Binance’s financial operations come as the company is facing civil charges from the CFTC of willful evasion of U.S. commodities laws by “intentionally structuring entities and transactions” to avoid U.S. regulations. The CFTC also alleged, without elaborating, that some of Binance’s corporate entities, including the Cayman holding firm, “have commingled funds.” Zhao called the charges “disappointing” and an “incomplete recitation of facts.” Binance is also under investigation by the Justice Department for suspected money laundering and sanctions violations, according to people familiar with the probe.

The CFTC declined to comment for this article, citing pending litigation, as did the SEC. The DOJ had no comment.

Binance has grown into a juggernaut in recent years, accounting for as much as 70% of world trading in cryptocurrencies. The company initially did business solely in crypto, enabling it to avoid the global banking system. But as Binance attracted more customers and hired more employees, its need for conventional bank accounts grew – to deposit the dollars it received from clients, to pay wages and other expenses, and to finance investments.

Silvergate, which specialised in serving the crypto industry, made this possible – until early March of this year, when the bank announced its closure after customers pulled deposits amid a wave of turmoil. The same month, New York’s chief financial regulator took over another crypto-friendly bank, Signature Bank, where Binance was also a client.

Alors que la répression américaine du secteur de la cryptographie s’accélère, on ne sait pas quelle banque deviendra la prochaine cheville ouvrière des opérations de Binance. Zhao a déclaré sur Twitter qu’il cherchait de nouveaux partenaires bancaires. “Quand une porte se ferme, d’autres s’ouvrent”, a-t-il écrit le 27 mars. Reuters n’a pas pu déterminer qui agit désormais en tant que banquier principal de Binance.

UN WEB COMPLEXE

Cinq mois après le lancement de l’échange à Shanghai en juillet 2017, Zhao a déclaré au média Tech en Asie que Binance n’avait aucun partenaire bancaire car les clients déposaient des fonds uniquement en crypto. “Plus vous traitez avec des fiat, plus (les autorités) peuvent vous contrôler”, a déclaré Zhao, en référence aux monnaies traditionnelles. Il a utilisé sa carte de crédit personnelle pour régler les factures de l’entreprise, ont déclaré d’anciens employés.

But the situation changed in 2018 when Binance sought to launch several local exchanges where customers could buy crypto with traditional currencies. Zhao dispatched his deputies to find banks and payment firms willing to accept Binance as a client. Chief among these deputies was Guangying Chen, the head of Binance’s back office. Chinese-born Chen was one of the few employees Zhao trusted with Binance’s finances, former executives said. Chen did not respond to questions about her role.

Binance had limited success obtaining bank accounts for its small local units, however. Most major banks turned the exchange down due to compliance concerns over crypto companies’ source of funds, according to company messages and former executives.

Then Silvergate came to the rescue. In recent years, the small San Diego-based bank had shifted its focus from local real-estate lending to servicing crypto companies. It quickly became a leading provider of banking services to the crypto sector.

By 2019, Binance had opened a Silvergate account for its Cayman-based holding company, Binance Holdings Limited, to receive revenues earned by the exchange. The account was handled by Chen and a finance executive who reported to her, Susan Li, company records show. Li didn’t comment for this article.

Binance then opened two further Silvergate accounts: for Seychelles firm Key Vision Development and Cayman Islands-based Merit Peak, both incorporated on Jan. 15, 2019 and controlled by Zhao, according to filings and bank records. Binance’s online platform began instructing customers to “deposit” their dollars into the Key Vision account. After users transferred funds to Key Vision, they received an email from Binance telling them they had “successfully deposited” their dollars, according to screenshots posted online by traders. Users could also “withdraw” their deposits via Binance’s platform, which said it would wire the dollars to their bank accounts.

Binance Holdings, Key Vision and Merit Peak formed the core of the global crypto exchange’s financial network. But inside Binance, few employees had full visibility over their roles. Access to information about the Binance group’s overall finances and its bank accounts was tightly managed by Chen, a half-dozen former executives said. Chen’s team also had access to a Silvergate account belonging to Binance’s purportedly independent U.S. partner, Binance.US, which Zhao in fact controls, as Reuters has previously reported. Binance.US told Reuters that only Binance.US executives have access to its bank accounts.

Binance’s then-chief compliance officer, Samuel Lim, was concerned by the exchange’s dependence on Silvergate due to requirements that U.S. banks closely monitor clients’ transactions, company messages show. Lim told executives in a 2020 message seen by Reuters that “the long term fix is to reduce reliance on US bank.” The CFTC complaint in March charged Lim with aiding and abetting Binance in violating U.S. laws “through intentional conduct that undermined Binance’s compliance program.” Lim has not publicly responded to the charge and did not comment for this article.

The person with direct knowledge of Binance’s group finances said Zhao shared Lim’s distrust of banks and instructed the finance team to keep dollar balances in the Silvergate accounts as low as possible. Dollars in the Binance Holdings account and Key Vision customer funds account that were surplus to immediate business needs were transferred to the Merit Peak account, where they were commingled, the source said. Money from the Merit Peak account was then used to purchase Binance’s BUSD token, according to the source and company messages. BUSD and other “stablecoins” are backed by dollars and designed to hold a steady value.

Reuters couldn’t determine the value of BUSD tokens purchased in this way. But blockchain data show that between January 2020 and December 2021, BUSD’s issuer, New York-based Paxos Trust, transferred at least $18 billion of BUSD to Binance. Binance received the BUSD in at least two wallets that it has previously identified as its own, without saying whether they contain company or customer funds. A Paxos spokesperson said that between late 2019 and early 2023 Binance sent Paxos dollars in return for BUSD “for it and its customers.”

The money flow between Binance and Paxos also could be reversed, according to the person with group-level knowledge and company messages. When Key Vision needed dollars to meet customer withdrawals, for instance, Binance would redeem BUSD at Paxos, which in return would send dollars to Merit Peak’s Silvergate account. Merit Peak would then distribute the dollars to other accounts as needed.

The value of BUSD tokens in circulation peaked at over $23 billion last November, with Binance-controlled crypto wallets holding as much as 90% of the total, according to crypto data firm Nansen. But in February, New York regulators ordered Paxos to stop issuing BUSD, citing Paxos’ failures in risk assessments and due diligence checks.

The Paxos spokesperson said the company “voluntarily announced its intention to end its relationship with Binance and has been successfully winding down all business relationships with Binance since.”

Since Paxos stopped issuing BUSD, Binance has reduced its holdings of the coin to around $3 billion, according to Nansen. Reuters could not determine why Binance reduced these holdings or how it converted them.

Money from other sources also entered Merit Peak’s account, including hundreds of millions of dollars from a Binance.US account, Reuters has previously reported. Bank records show the Binance.US account was operated by Chen. Binance.US told Reuters Merit Peak “was withdrawing funds from its own account.” It didn’t respond to follow up questions.

Silvergate a informé Binance qu’il fermait le compte de Key Vision à la mi-2021, selon deux personnes ayant une connaissance directe. Silvergate a pris la décision sur la base que Key Vision avait effectué des transactions inappropriées pour un compte bancaire de garde, a déclaré l’une des personnes, sans donner plus de détails. En juin, Binance a envoyé un e-mail aux utilisateurs pour leur dire que les “dépôts en USD” via Silvergate seraient “interrompus”. Binance a alors commencé à utiliser un compte Key Vision à Signature Bank pour recevoir les fonds des clients, selon les sources et les captures d’écran des transactions des utilisateurs. Signature Bank n’a pas commenté cet article.

Le porte-parole de Binance, Jaffe, a déclaré que ce rapport sur les comptes Key Vision était inexact, mais n’a pas fourni plus de détails.

UNE BASE BALTIQUE

Binance’s financial network also required a reliable euro bank account, former executives said. The exchange found a solution in Lithuania which provided a European Union base and a straightforward registration process. In May 2020, Binance set up the Lithuanian company, initially called Binance UAB, with Zhao as its sole shareholder and Chen as a board member. Binance later unveiled the firm, renamed as Bifinity, as its “official fiat-to-crypto payments provider.” Zhao installed Helen Hai, Binance’s China-born head of fiat operations, as president. Hai didn’t comment for this article.

In 2021, Bifinity had revenue of 680 million euros, according to its financial report, and paid over 420 million euros to a single unnamed related party. The person with direct knowledge of Binance’s group finances identified the unnamed party as Binance Holdings. Bifinity did not respond to questions from Reuters.

One consequence of Binance’s financial manoeuvring, four former Binance executives said, was to protect the exchange’s profits from tax authorities. Binance has never disclosed where its Binance.com trading platform is based nor what corporate taxes it pays and where.

To assess how much tax Binance pays, Reuters reviewed the exchange’s public filings since 2018 in countries where it has said it has significant operations. In France and Dubai, where Binance established hubs last year, local units have not detailed tax payments. France’s finance ministry declined to comment and Dubai didn’t comment. In Malta, where Binance said it was based for several years, its main local unit reported losses each year, so it paid no tax. Maltese authorities didn’t comment. The only significant tax payments Reuters found were in Lithuania, where in 2022 Bifinity paid 42.5 million euros, data from Lithuania’s tax authority show.

With the growth in Bifinity’s business came a higher profile. In July 2021, Lithuania’s central bank said it had warned Binance not to provide unlicensed investment services. Six months later the exchange appointed Saulius Galatiltis, who previously ran the central bank’s investment management department, as chief executive of Bifinity.

When Lithuania’s parliament debated a new bill to toughen rules for the country’s crypto companies last year, Galatiltis urged a parliamentary committee to avoid stricter legislation. He emphasised Bifinity’s tax payments, which last year made it one of Lithuania’s largest corporate taxpayers. “This business is global, in many countries all over the world,” Galatiltis told the committee, discussing Bifinity. “I think a business which acts globally and pays tax locally must be attractive to any country,” he said. Galatiltis didn’t respond to requests for comment for this article.

Le Parlement a finalement adopté un ensemble de règles édulcorées. Le ministère lituanien des Finances a déclaré à Reuters que Bifinity était impliqué dans le processus formel de “fournir des commentaires et des suggestions” sur le projet de loi avec d’autres institutions et acteurs du marché. “Nous ne basons jamais nos décisions de politique réglementaire sur une seule entité.”