The final sentencing of former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao took place on April 30. The result was a 4-month prison sentence for CZ for crimes of negligence in preventing money laundering.
Former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao was sentenced to 4 months in prison
On April 30 (US time), the sentencing hearing for former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) finally took place. For violating money laundering regulations, CZ was sentenced to 4 months in prison, many times lower than the level recommended by previous indictments.
During the sentencing hearing, Mr. Zhao once again apologized and wanted to accept responsibility "for his own mistakes."
Judge Richard Jones noted that Mr. Zhao voluntarily appeared before the US court, as well as had a clean record, and said that the former Binance CEO most likely will not repeat his crimes. Therefore, he surprised him by sentencing Changpeng Zhao to only 4 months in prison - lower than the 18 months in the agreement with the US Department of Justice and the 36 months requested by the prosecutor.
Mr. Zhao also previously paid a $50 million fine to US officials and agreed not to hold a management position at Binance for 3 years.
In general, this is a sentence that is not "expected" by the community, and is XEM not too "harsh" for CZ. As previously, Yi He - the co-founder of Binance and someone who has a close relationship with Zhao - once revealed that CZ's situation in the US is "still fine" .
Bloomberg points out that with a net worth of up to 40 billion USD at the present time, Changpeng Zhao will be the richest person ever sentenced to prison in the US.
With this verdict, the legal struggle between Binance and the US government has temporarily ended.
As Coin68 reported on November 22, 2023, Binance has reached an agreement to end the investigation by the US Department of Justice and the US Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) targeting the platform. Accordingly, the exchange accepted to pay a record fine of up to 4.3 billion USD .
Even though he is far from his position at Binance, CZ is still the richest billionaire in the cryptocurrency industry in 2024 , ranked 50th globally according to Forbes . He is also cherishing a new project called Giggle Academy.
BNB price has not fluctuated much around the latest news above, currently trading around 580 USD.
15m chart of BNB/ USDT pair on Binance at 05:15 AM on May 1, 2024
The cryptocurrency industry has recently witnessed many trials of notorious figures, including:
- Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison for 7 counts of fraud and deceit leading to the collapse of the FTX exchange ;
- Craig Wright denied claim to be Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto ;
- Do Kwon and Terraform Labs were found guilty of making false statements about LUNA - UST to lure investors;
- Former Amazon programming engineer Shakeeb Ahmed was sentenced to 3 years and 3 months in prison for attacking 2 DeFi projects in 2022, causing $12 million in damage. This is also the first smart contract attack to result in a conviction;
- Avraham Eisenberg , the hacker behind the attack on the DeFi Mango Markets project in October 2022, was convicted offraud and manipulation and is facing a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.
Since CZ resigned, he pleaded guilty to negligence in preventing money laundering. Binance has a new CEO , Richard Teng , who has implemented enhanced KYC measures for US users and a series of other changes for the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange.
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