2y ago

Ex-Binance CEO Zhao urges judge to allow him to leave US before sentencing

www.reuters.com

Nov 24 (Reuters) - Lawyers for former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao are urging a U.S. judge to reject the Justice Department's request to bar him from returning to his home in the United Arab Emirates until he is sentenced for violating anti-money laundering requirements.

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Revoke his bail as he is now showing an indication of a flight risk.
- "I will definitely come back I promise."
- Yup. Cuz there’s absolutely no way he’d be coming back…
  
  Even if he's being honest about his intention of coming back voluntarily it's still a flight risk as there's the possibility he doesn't come back, changes his mind, etc. No extradition and he has the resources to avoid it anyway.
"Please let me flee and avoid the consequences as I am rich your Honor.", rich dude at trial.
- Now that is a motivating statement for any judge. They love sucking rich men’s cocks
U.S. authorities said Binance broke U.S. anti-money laundering and sanctions laws and failed to report more than 100,000 suspicious transactions with organizations the U.S. described as terrorist groups including Hamas, al Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
Never gets old
- They handed them hefty fines but I doubt they let CZ serve time in jail unless the recieving account was just ISIS Hodling Company and they kept business going
Yeah there's no reason why they should let him.
The UAE will shield him from extradition if he is allowed to return home because he is rich.
He is the very definition of "Flight Risk" because he has:
Means - UAE will support him if he seeks asylum and/or legal aid. Binance is not based in the USA; so it cannot be dissolved by a US court finding. It will likely not fire him because of these charges, due to the nature of cryptocurrency.
Motive - The USA will not be able to quickly extradite him if he flees, and fleeing is in his interest to avoid being charged or jailed and ensure he keeps his job.
Money - He still has lots of money. Unlike SBF; he wasn't suddenly bankrupted by Binance failing. Binance still exists and will continue to do so Without the USA allowing it to do business in it's borders!
- There's no need or reason to fire him - he's already stepped down
He's playing 4d chess here, see by ASKING to be allowed to leave, he makes it clear that he won't flee the country unless he gets permission, so there won't be any reason to try to prevent it! _/s
I am actually surprised China is letting this happen. They must be pissed with this dude.
He really did burn all his friends with one ego tweet to Sam Bankman.
- China has no say in letting it happen. The company is not based in China. He is a Canadian citizen and resides in the UAE. He was born in China but it's a little late for them to get involved in that.
- What, exactly, could China do to prevent the US from sentencing a criminal in their own borders?
- Can you elaborate on the one tweet thing? Im out of the loop
  
  Of course.
  Basically, Sam Bankman fried and this CEO of binance got into an public ego match on twitter.
  As Sam was the owner of FTX, and Binance was the Chinese version of that.
  he tweeted:
  It seems $15m not only changed @kevinolearytv’s mind about crypto, it also made him align with a fraudster. Is he seriously defending SBF?
  https://youtu.be/pIXq1pfvG0g (baseless attacks start around 4:20).
  Which one domino crashed into another. FTX was found to be playing with clients funds and insolvent, and binance was turned inside out in the same process. Sam ended up with a 105 year sentence, and the Binance CEO is here.
Binance sounds like a financial institution for bisexuals.
- As long as you're bisexual in need of illegal money laundering then they don't discriminate.
Should be pretty easy to get him back, right? The US has reasonably good relations with UAE, and could confirm in advance that they'd extradite. Sure, maybe he cpuld more easily disappear into some other country; freeze all his accounts? And when they do get him back, he'd be going away for longer.
I dunno. He's a crook, but it's not like he's some truly horrible villain, like Trump.
- It's the fact that there is no extradition treaty in place that would give a legal basis to get him back making it not so easy. Also, the justice department only agreed on letting him out on bail only because they could thought they could manage the flight risk by imposing travel restrictions. It says all this in the article.
  This part is my opinion but seeing as he helped launder money for terrorist groups, many of which are based in that region of the world, combined with the other resources at his disposal, there is a definite risk that he has a "change of heart" and attempts to evade his sentence.
  Knowingly and willfully laundering hundreds of millions of dollars for Iran, Syria, North Korea, Russia, and people engaging in the exploitation of children is definitely villainous. More so than Trump.
- Not really. A) it’d be blatantly showing him a favoritism that we don’t ever show, and B) the UAE is friendly, yes, but they’re friendly like the House of Saud is friendly: on board with us, close allies, funded terror acts against us. It’s better to think of the UAE as resentful vassals than it is to think of them as full allies in the way we think of like Canada and Australia. Canada and Australia will willingly bear burdens for us and would probably see this as us doing them a favor had we done it for one of their citizens. For the UAE, it’s not like that, it’s a pretty big burden to place on them and they haven’t requested it given that it’s their citizen. Add in that these are pretty serious crimes and we’d be letting him go somewhere where he’d be able to easily slip away it’d be pretty stupid.

25 comments