A Court of Madrid proposes to sit on the bench for improper appropriation to Binance Spain Slu, the Spanish subsidiary of Binance, the most used platform in the world to buy and sell cryptocurrencies after the complaint presented by a Spanish businessman in 2023. In the car, to the That Eldiario.es has had access, the head of the Court of Instruction 27 of Madrid, María Ángeles Velázquez, explains that there are “enough crime reasons” and agrees to end the instruction after having carried out the “relevant” proceedings. Now, the parties have ten days to present their accusation brief or ask for the dismissal of the cause. Consulted by this newspaper, a company spokesman has declined to comment because it is an ongoing legal procedure.
The complainant accuses Binance of appropriating “undue” and “without any justification” of 67,550 euros that he invested on the platform and with which he never operated because the company did not facilitate the necessary access key despite having claimed it in “innumerable occasions.” The businessman filed the complaint in 2023 advised by lawyer María Victoria Vega, partner of the Auren Firm. Before he had tried to recover that money with the sending of up to two bureaux to which the mercantile did not respond, according to the complaint. During the instruction, the judge called to declare the founder and now former CEO of the company, Changpeng Zhao, who did not appear.
Binance remains the largest platform in the sector despite its problems with justice and the great crisis in the sector that began in 2022. Its founder, Changpeng Zhao, accepted in November 2023 to declare himself guilty of the money laundering charges of the money that accused him of the US Department of Justice and resign from his position. Its Spanish subsidiary is an operator recognized by the Bank of Spain since July 2022.
“Function leave”
The facts denounced date back to May 2021, when businessman JL invested 67,550 euros in Binance. Since then, and until the date of presentation of the complaint, the employer claims to have claimed the company to facilitate an access key with which to operate on the platform. To do this, he claims to have followed “all the required steps”, among which he cites “upload the Binance emails to the white list, send a video to reestablish the ‘Google Authenticator’ code, send its IP, the date of creation of the account and a selfie identifying with its ID ”.
In the complaint, he insists that despite having met all the requirements they asked for, having contributed the documentation and carried out the required operations “has not obtained any solution and has not been able to recover his money”, which has affected his life and Your business in a “serious” way.
The entrepreneur considers Binance’s “absence” accredited with respect to the solution offered, since the only action carried out is to require documentation that “once provided does not serve to unlock the money and be able to recover it”. And it also shows that the requested data and documents are “of maximum risk in terms of cybersecurity.” According to the complaint, there has been a “lack of responsibility” of the company, since it should “extreme the necessary security measures so that this does not happen.”
In October 2022, another Court of Madrid opened another cause against Binance and its former CEO, Changpeng Zhao, for alleged crimes of improper appropriation and computer scam. In this case, another Spanish businessman accused the “block” platform without prior notice and without justifying the “concrete cause” two electronic wallets that had open on the platform with an amount equivalent to 85,000 euros. That procedure was filed. The private accusation appealed that archive before the Provincial Court of Madrid, according to the legal sources consulted.
Source: www.eldiario.es
