In the latest development in the battle between Binance and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the cryptocurrency exchange is seeking a protective order against the regulator.
The world’s largest crypto exchange, Binance filed the order late on Monday (14 August) citing “unreasonable” and “limited expedited” discoveries after already providing the SEC with sufficient information.
The protective order is seeking to drop four depositions against Binance employees as well as drop the depositions against its Chief Executive and Chief Financial Officer, whose names were not specified.
BAM Trading – operating firm of Binance.US and BAM Management – stated in its filing: “The SEC had declined BAM’s proposals to meaningfully limit its requests and is opposed to the motion for a protective order.
“The SEC’s position is unreasonable and part of a broader pattern of the SEC abusing the discovery provision of the Consent Order. The Consent Order authorised ‘limited expedited discovery’ on a narrow set of topics – namely, the custody, security, and availability of BAM customer assets.
“Instead of seeking ‘limited’ discovery, the SEC has spent the past 45 days serving incredibly overboard and unreasonable discovery requests that seek, on the face, every single document in BAM’s possession related to customer assets.
The SEC sued Binance last June on 13 charges that relate to circulating unregistered securities and a “calculated evasion of the law”, amongst other penalties.
Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance, was also charged by the US financial regulator and swiftly came to the defence of himself and his company in a joint statement affirming they “will vigorously defend” itself from the charges.
The Binance protective order filing stated: “BAM has worked in good faith, but the SEC has been steadfast in its belief that the Consent Order gives it carte blanche to investigate every aspect of BAM’s asset custody practices without any discernible limitation whatsoever.”
