Nicholas Quaid, Who Helped Develop Crypto Legislation, Leaves DOJ

Nicholas Quaid, who helped develop the regime surrounding crypto crime legislation, is leaving the Department of Justice, Coindesk wrote.

Quaid will depart his current role at the end of this week.

He was second in command to the DOJ and was there for around two years. His time there was spent fighting white collar crime and he had a focus on cryptocurrency.

Now he’s likely to return to his former law firm Latham & Watkins, where he was a partner in New York.

There have been numerous interactions between federal law enforcement and the crypto industry, with there being controversy for months over exactly how to regulate the burgeoning sector.

In one recent instance, the Department of Justice has been looking into Binance, wanting to see whether the exchange violated the Bank Secrecy Act. The Bank Secrecy Act requires crypto exchanges to register with the Department of the Treasury and adhere to anti-money-laundering rules if they do enough U.S. business.

Read more: Report: Feds Investigate Binance Over Bank Secrecy Violations

The DOJ in 2020 asked Binance to release internal records about its anti-money-laundering measures, along with communications involving founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao.

The DOJ money laundering section has asked Binance to turn over messages from Zhao and a dozen other people on various issues, including the company’s detection of unlawful transactions. And prosecutors were asking about the records with instructions that “documents be destroyed, altered or removed from Binance’s files” or “transferred from the United States,” according to the report. This was all part of the investigation into the exchange’s compliance with U.S. financial crime laws.

In response to PYMNTS, Binance said regulators “are reaching out to every major crypto exchange to better understand our industry.”

“We work with agencies regularly to address any outstanding questions,” the exchange wrote. “Binance has an industry leading global security and compliance team which boasts more than 500 employees across the globe. Our team includes professionals with backgrounds as regulators, senior investigators from distinguished blockchain analysis firms, and law enforcement agents who have led some of the largest investigations into cybercrimes.”