Former Binance CEO CZ sentenced to four months
Al Jazeera
US said he looked away from transactions that supported child sex abuse, the illegal drug trade and ‘terrorism’.
Changpeng Zhao, the former chief executive of Binance, was sentenced on Tuesday to four months in prison after pleading guilty to violating US money-laundering laws at the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange.
The sentence was imposed by United States District Judge Richard Jones in Seattle, who rejected prosecutors’ request that the 47-year-old Zhao serve a three-year term.
Once considered the most powerful person in the cryptocurrency industry, Zhao, known as “CZ,” is the second major crypto boss to be sentenced to prison after Sam Bankman-Fried. In March, Bankman-Fried received 25 years behind bars for stealing eight billion dollars from customers of his now-bankrupt FTX exchange.
Zhao pleaded guilty in November to one count of failing to take required anti-money-laundering measures and stepped down as Binance agreed to pay $4.3bn to settle related allegations.
US officials said Zhao deliberately looked the other way as people conducted transactions that supported child sex abuse, the illegal drug trade and “terrorism”.
