Binace, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, will pay over $4bn to US officials after admitting to unlicensed money transfers, sanctions violations, and willfully failing to institute anti-money laundering protections, federal officials announced on Tuesday. The oversights allowed trading with sanctioned nations like Iran, Cuba, and Syria, and failed to institute systems to report suspicious potential transactions with terror groups, according to the Treasury Department. “Binance was allowing illicit actors to transact freely, supporting activities from child sexual abuse to illegal narcotics to terrorism,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellensaid on Tuesday. Changpeng Zhao, the founder of and CEO of Binance, is also stepping down, and will pay a $50m fine after pleading guilty to related charges. He could face up to 18 months in prison. “I made mistakes, and I must take responsibility,” the executive wrote on X. “This is best for our community, for Binance, and for myself.” Federal officials described a wide-ranging set of problems at the crypto exchange, which at times handled two-thirds of global crypto trades. “It willfully enabled hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions between American users and users subject to US sanctions,” US Attorney General Merrick Garland said in remarks on Tuesday. “And its platform accommodated criminals across the world who used Binance to move their stolen funds and other criminal proceeds. “Binance prioritized its profits over the safety of the American people.” The massive penalty, one of the largest in US financial regulation history, will also go towards resolving inquiries from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCen), and the Office of Foreign Assets Control. On multiple occasions, Binance leadership intentionally took steps that allowed dangerous and illegal transactions to take place, according to the Justice Department. Binance knew it served US customers, meaning it had to register with FinCen and implement anti-money laundering controls, but “chose not to comply,” per the DOJ. Rather than set up these protections, the company created a separate Binance.US platform in 2019, while seeking to encourage VIP customers to obscure their accounts and continue using the main exchange, officials said. “Binance executives, including Zhao, made a plan to contact VIP customers and help the VIP register a new account for an offshore entity and transfer holdings to that account,” the DoJ said in an announcement of the agreement on Tuesday. “Binance employees also called US VIPs to encourage them to provide information that suggested the customer was not located in the United States.” The company, knowing it had US customers, also failed to introduce controls that would stop them from making trades with sanctioned jurisdictions like Iran, resulting in over $898m in trades between US and Iran-based users between January 2019 and May 2022. At one point, according to the DoJ, Zhao told employees it was “better to ask for forgiveness than permission,” while in another instance, a compliance employee wrote in a message, “We need a banner ‘is washing drug money too hard these days - come to binance we got cake for you.’” In a statement on Tuesday, Binance acknowledge making “criminal violations.” “These resolutions acknowledge our company’s responsibility for historical, criminal compliance violations, and allow our company to turn the page on a challenging yet transformative chapter of learning and growth,” the company wrote. “With the compliance and governance enhancements enshrined in our commitments, we can begin to share our vision for Binance’s exciting future and the future of the crypto industry.” The company also emphasised that the resolutions don’t allege Binance misappropriated user funds or engaged in market manipulation. Richard Teng, the company’s former global head of regional markets, will take over as CEO, according to Binance. The massive agreement with federal regulators will also require Binance to accept the appointment of a government monitor to oversee the business and bar Zhao from involvement with the company until three years after the monitor is appointed, according to court records viewed by The New York Times. Notably, the Securities and Exchange Commission was not a part of the Binance agreement. The SEC sued Binance and Zhao in June, alleging that they used companies beneficially owned by Zhao to inflate trading prices and make money off customers, allegedly mixing customer funds with Binance money. “While we take the SEC’s allegations seriously, they should not be the subject of an SEC enforcement action, let alone on an emergency basis. We intend to defend our platform vigorously,” the company responded at the time in a statement. “And, to be clear: any allegations that user assets on the Binance.US platform have ever been at risk are simply wrong, and there is zero justification for the Staff’s action in light of the ample time the Staff has had to conduct their investigation,” the company added in the statement. The massive settlement comes just weeks after FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was found guilty in federal court of defrauding customers on his popular cryptocurrency exchange out of billions of dollars. Bankman-Fried’s defence team has vowed to fight the charges.

By Miho Uranaka OSAKA, Japan The battery arm of Japan's Panasonic will need to build around four more

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 24, 2023--

Several U.S. agencies are investigating allegations of fraud leveled by billionaire Cameron Winklevoss against Digital Currency Group (DCG)

The mother of murdered two-year-old James Bulger has condemned “sick” AI-generated clips of her son circulating on social media three decades after his death. An animated version of the dead toddler discussed his abduction and murder by two 10-year-old boys in 1993, in videos shared on TikTok which James’ mother Denise Fergus condemned as “disgusting” in an interview with The Mirror. The social media app said the clips have since been removed for violating its guidelines. James was tortured and killed by Jon Venables and Robert Thompson after they snatched him from a shopping centre in Bootle, Merseyside, on February 12 1993. The pair were jailed for life but released on licence with new identities in 2001. Venables, 40, was sent back to prison in 2010 and 2017, the latter for possessing indecent images of children, and was turned down for parole in 2020. The videos on TikTok showed animated children, including one depicting James, detailing his abduction and murder. James’ body was found on a railway line two days after his abduction and some of the animated clips reportedly showed an avatar by train tracks. A slew of AI-generated likenesses of other missing or murdered children had also been shared on TikTok, according to reports. Others showed Madeleine McCann, who disappeared aged three while on a holiday in Portugal in 2007; 11-year-old Rhys Jones, who was murdered in Liverpool as he walked home from school in 2007, and Peter Connelly, also known as Baby P, who died after months of abuse in 2007. Ms Fergus, 55, told The Mirror the clips were “disgusting” and she is reportedly particularly upset by an avatar which looked like a photo of James and appeared to speak. She told the paper: “It is one thing to tell the story, I have not got a problem with that. “Everyone knows the story of James anyway. “But to actually put a dead child’s face, speaking about what happened to him, is absolutely disgusting. “It is bringing a dead child back to life. “It is wrong. “To use the face and a moving mouth of a child who is no longer here, who has been brutally taken away from us, there are no words. “I think these people must be disturbed. “They have got to be. “It is not just not nice for the parents to see. “I don’t think anyone at all should be able to see stuff like this. “To see his little face moving when he is no longer here, it is disgusting. “It all should be taken down and stopped. “It is not fair on the people who have lost children, or lost anyone. “We are not just saying take James down, we are saying take it all down. “It is beyond sick. “Who can sit there and think of such a thing?” Ms Fergus’ husband Stuart reportedly contacted one produce of the animated videos, who appeared to be in the Philippines, and asked for the videos to be removed. The Mirror reported that the clips were often voiced in American accents, and also had Spanish and French versions. A TikTok spokesperson said: “We want TikTok to be a welcoming place for everyone, and there is no place on our platform for disturbing content of this nature. “Our community guidelines are clear that we do not allow synthetic media that contains the likeness of a young person. “We continue to remove content of this nature as we find it.”

Europe will see mild and wet weather in November, delaying the start of the heating season yet again,

Each photo unveils a new side of Pokimane's personality, making her more relatable to her ever-growing audience

Check out the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III pre-load and launch times for all regions and platforms before the game's release on Nov. 10 at 12 a.m. ET.

SINGAPORE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 26, 2023--

There are several times when the development team placed minor Easter Eggs and references to famous YouTubers to grab their attention

Recently, ‘GMA3’ invited a financial influencer named Haley Sacks for a hearty discussion about her profile

BELLEVUE, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 10, 2023--