Binance.US Ex-CEO Catherine Coley Breaks Years of Silence in SEC Lawsuit
A bang rocks the crypto world as former Binance.US CEO Catherine Coley emerges from obscurity and is now in the crosshairs of the SEC lawsuit against the exchange.
Ex-Binance.US CEO breaks silence on SEC lawsuit
For years, Coley, who once shone as a top manager at Ripple, had completely withdrawn from both social media and the press. After her abrupt departure from Binance.US in 2021, there was real silence around the former top woman. The whole thing was so mysterious that the police had to issue an official statement: “No missing persons report”. But now Coley has suddenly reappeared – and that in the midst of the Binance lawsuit.
” Bloomberg ” has explosive statements from the former Binance.US CEO, which became part of the SEC complaint. These provide illuminating insights into Coley’s time at the helm of the exchange’s US branch. In her statement, Coley explained that Binance.US was launched with the resources and staff of the international platform Binance.com, which was then operating in China. But that became one of Coley’s “biggest pain points” when trying to recruit Western and US-based engineers to work on Binance US’s Chinese-influenced codebase.
According to Coley, data transmission and financing in the USA were particularly tricky. “CZ never answered my questions about why, how and what we had to do to transfer the data,” revealed the former managing director. She meant Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance.
Crypto exchange in turmoil according to ex-executives
After that, Coley was replaced by Brian Brooks, former head of the OCC, a renowned US government agency, and a former Coinbase executive . Brooks also appeared before the SEC and commented on Binance. During his time at the company, Brooks emphasized that Binance.US was operated on liquidity. This comes from investment funds associated with Zhao. Zhao himself initially financed the company with a whopping ten million US dollars.
For Brooks, the existence of these funds posed a “serious problem” because it made the US branch heavily dependent on Zhao, not only as a controller but also as an economic counterpart. At the end of his term, changes were suddenly rejected without further discussion. On which he and his team had worked for a whole 80 days. “At some point I realized that CZ was the actual CEO of BAM Trading, not me,” Brooks revealed, alluding to the legal entity.
The Binance.US scandal continues to gather momentum, and the revelations from Coley and Brooks cast a worrying light on the internal workings of the crypto exchange’s US branch. The question of whether there will be other explosive details and how they will affect the company remains unanswered for the time being. It remains exciting how Binance US will react to these serious allegations and what the consequences will be.
