For a man who's 'crypto journey' reportedly began when he sat on a committee at Morgan Stanley to evaluate crypto opportunities, it's a new and awkward kink in the road. Perlman and his 750-person strong team now need to prove that compliance really was a Binance 'pillar', which might also be difficult in light of various internal emails about the advantages of encouraging US clients to use VPNs in order to disguise their locations.

In 2018, Binance's then chief of compliance, unnamed in the document, is said to have stated to another unnamed Binance compliance colleague (seemingly in delight): “We are operating as a fking unlicensed securities exchange in the USA bro.” It's not the ideal thing to say when you're head of compliance at an organization claiming that, 'dedication to compliance is a core pillar of our culture and operations.' There are many reasons in the SEC's long document to suggest that Perlman will have a role in helping to fight the regulator's case chief among them is the fact that Perlman's predecessor dropped the exchange directly in it. It's not clear whether Perlman had a hand in writing the unattributed Binance rebuttal, but as the current head of compliance he presumably wasn't too far removed. The key accusations include the fact that Binance was allegedly operating as an unregistered securities exchange and that it broke the laws relating to know your customer (KYC).īinance has promptly issued a riposte stating that it intends to defend its platform 'vigorously.' It says the SEC's decision to go about 'unilaterally labeling certain tokens and services as securities,' which enabled the accusation that it was operating an unregistered securities exchange, lacked the 'thoughtful, nuanced approach,' necessary when dealing with crypto products.

Yesterday, the SEC published a 136-page document detailing all the ways in which it says Binance broke its securities rules. And Perlman's predecessor hasn't made matters any easier for him. When Noah Perlman, Morgan Stanley's former long-serving head of financial crimes, joined Binance as its new head of compliance in January 2023, he declared that his job was one of the “most challenging opportunities in compliance.”įive months later, that looks like an understatement.

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