With the increasing adoption of cryptocurrencies, the popularity of exchanges that allow these currencies to be bought and sold by everyone is also increasing. Binance, which operates in our country and is considered the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, is among these exchanges.
However, a newly shared report accused Binance, which came to the fore with ‘Nazi’ allegations due to a post shared recently, of sharing user data with Russia, which has become the only topic that the whole world is talking about by launching a military operation against Ukraine.
Information allegedly solicited to fight crime
According to a report shared by Reuters, the world’s leading digital asset exchange Binance has released customer data from Russia’s financial intelligence agreed to share it with the organization. In the news, the Russian and Eastern Europe Director of the giant stock exchange, Gleb Kostarev, held a meeting with the Federal Financial Monitoring Service of the Russian Federation (Rosfinmonitoring) in April of last year; It was stated that the authorities requested information such as the addresses and names of the users from Kostarev in this meeting. Reuters also claimed that Kostarev said he had no choice but to share the data.
The report stated that Rosfinmonitoring stated that it wanted to use the request to fight crime. Also, a relevant source stated that the institution was working to track down the millions of dollars of Bitcoin collected by the team of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny at the time.
Alexei Navalny, known for criticizing the Russian government and Putin, was jailed last year. The 45-year-old politician stated that the cryptocurrency donations to him and his team were used to expose the Kremlin’s corruption. In addition, the shared news noted that donations following Navalny’s arrest in January 2021 were made through Binance.
Binance denied the allegations
The giant stock market made statements after these statements were released. Binance denied the accusations in a blog post it shared: “Reports that Binance has shared any user data with Russian regulators, including Alexei Navalny, are absolutely false. Binance’s relations with Russia before the war; It was no different from any international establishment such as banks and hamburger restaurants.”
Finally, the stock market added that they stopped working with Russia after the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war and instead complied with the sanction requirements: “As soon as the war started, we stopped our work with Russia and implemented the sanctions requirements. As far as we know, Binance is the only cryptocurrency exchange that has implemented a package of sanctions against Russian account holders by the European Union today.”
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