Dubbed the “most feared man on Wall Street”, Former FBI special agent BJ Kang has been hired by Binance US to lead a new investigative unit aimed at finding and stopping illegal activity.
According to Krishna Juvvadi, the Binance US head of legal, the “investigations unit” is a brand-new division within the U.S. cryptocurrency exchange. Former FBI special agent BJ Kang will serve as the division’s first “head of investigations.”
In order to find and stop criminal conduct on its platform, Kang will work with law enforcement, regulators, and even other exchanges. He will also create an “investigations infrastructure” for Binance US.
In a statement released on October 20, Binance US claimed that during the previous year, it had reinforced its legal, compliance, and risk operations by adding 145% more staff to those departments and allocating more than one-fifth of the entire workforce to them.
During his nearly 20-year tenure at the FBI, Kang is renowned for leading prominent investigations into insider trading and securities fraud in the traditional financial sector.
After becoming famous for being pictured arresting Raj Rajaratnam, a former hedge fund manager convicted of insider trading, and Bernie Madoff, who was found guilty of conducting the largest Ponzi scheme to date, the former FBI agent was once labeled “the most dreaded man on Wall Street” by Reuters.
He formerly worked for the FBI’s Washington Field Office’s cybercrime unit, where he looked into crimes like extortion, money laundering, and hacking that target financial and crypto companies, among others.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which has reportedly requested information regarding two firms allegedly operating as market makers for the platform, is looking into how Binance US may have revealed its potential ties to the companies to users simultaneously with Kang’s hiring.
Binance, which conducts business independently of its US unit, has also had to defend itself against claims made in two Reuters exposés over the last year that the platform processed at least $2.35 billion in hacking-related, investment fraud, and drug sales transactions between 2017 and 2021.
The platform allegedly “swerved scrutiny” from regulators in the US and UK, according to the most recent charges, which were made on October 17. They referenced two different plans that were either presented by employees or affiliates.
It was suggested that Binance backdate service agreements in the U.K. allegation in order to obtain a financial registration exemption, and in the U.S., it was suggested to focus regulators’ attention on a U.S. corporation rather than Binance itself.
