Binance is facing a criminal complaint in France for its social media marketing.
Filed by crypto investors, the complaint accuses the crypto exchange of misleading commercial practices and promoting itself before it was registered in the country, Reuters reported Tuesday (Dec. 20).
The filing of a complaint does not necessarily mean that prosecutors will begin an investigation, according to the report.
The complaint said Binance marketed itself on social media platforms before it was officially registered as a digital financial service provider in May, violating a French law that forbids unregistered providers from promotion in the country.
The company has marketed itself globally with the help of volunteers dubbed “Binance Angels,” who promote the exchange on social media, per the report.
Reached for comment, a Binance spokesperson told PYMNTS, “We are not in a position to comment on the Mediapart article because we have not received any notification relating to either criminal or civil proceedings and therefore do not have access to the content of such complaint.”
The decision of France’s market regulator, the Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF), to register one of Binance’s subsidiaries as a digital assets services company was met by a wave of concern in the country.
For example, Aurore Lalucq, French Member of the European Parliament (MEP) and member of that body’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, urged the AMF to reconsider its “incomprehensible” decision to OK Binance. Lalucq was concerned that the ruling gave Binance a “guarantee of respectability,” the Financial Times reported June 27.
More recently, Binance’s efforts to restore public trust in its crypto exchange have proven to be challenging.
On Friday (Dec. 16), word came that Mazars, the auditing firm hired by the platform, is ceasing all future crypto accounting operations because of the public pushback and criticism it received from its work reporting on Binance’s finances.
Two days earlier, during a Wednesday (Dec. 14) Senate Banking Committee hearing, both Shark Tank investor Kevin O’Leary and Sen. Elizabeth Warren also questioned the legitimacy of the privately run crypto exchange.
Binance’s U.S. operations have, since 2018, been under investigation for anti-money laundering (AML) infractions. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) reportedly has held off on filing charges due to internal disagreements around whether strong enough evidence has been gathered, as well as lingering concerns that rushing a formal filing might, because of Binance’s sheer size, inadvertently destabilize the rest of the crypto ecosystem.
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