SEC reverses decision on sealing, redacting some documents in Binance.US case

Observers should soon get a look at some of inac­ces­si­ble doc­u­ments in the Unit­ed States Secu­ri­ties and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) case against Binance. The doc­u­ments were sealed or redact­ed at the SEC’s request and are being unsealed at the request of the SEC itself.

Dis­trict of Colum­bia Dis­trict Court Mag­is­trate Judge Zia Faruqui issued an order Sept. 15 grant­i­ng the SEC’s motion to unseal or remove the redac­tion from the doc­u­ments. The order lists 18 sealed doc­u­ments and anoth­er nine par­tial­ly sealed or redact­ed documents. 

Binance and “any non­par­ty that claims a con­fi­den­tial­i­ty des­ig­na­tion regard­ing doc­u­ments relat­ing to the SEC’s Motion to Com­pel” will be able to argue against the unseal­ing for sev­en days, and the SEC will have sev­en days to respond to those claims.

Late night fil­ing by SEC in Binance case most­ly redact­ed and sealed but it looks like SEC fired back tons of evi­dence and tes­ti­mo­ny against some claim Binance has made. It’s a bit of a land slide com­pared to what we’ve seen so far.

Won­der if any cor­re­la­tion to weird Chi­nese OTC… pic.twitter.com/rq5oeXycdE

— Adam Cochran (adamscochran.eth) (@adamscochran) Sep­tem­ber 15, 2023

All of the sealed doc­u­ments, filed as dock­et no. 102, were filed on Aug. 28. There was spec­u­la­tion at the time that they were con­nect­ed with a U.S. Jus­tice Depart­ment inves­ti­ga­tion of Binance. The par­tial­ly sealed doc­u­ments total 117 pages. Among them are inter­nal Binance.US doc­u­ments, emails and SEC court fil­ings, includ­ing the mem­o­ran­dum on Binace.US’ com­pli­ance with SEC dis­cov­ery efforts filed Sept. 14. 

Relat­ed: Binance.US not coop­er­at­ing with inves­ti­ga­tion, US SEC says in filing

The list in Faruqui’s order does not encom­pass all the sealed doc­u­ments filed in the case. A pro­posed order filed by BAM, the Binance.US hold­ing com­pa­ny, on Sept. 11, along with the SEC’s oppo­si­tion doc­u­ment and eight exhibits, were filed as sealed and are not men­tioned in the order. 

The SEC case against Binance.US, Binance and CEO Chang­peng Zhao was ini­ti­at­ed in June and revolves around claims of unreg­is­tered secu­ri­ties oper­a­tions and oth­er impro­pri­eties, includ­ing wash sales. Binance.US request­ed a pro­tec­tive order against the SEC in August. 

Mag­a­zine: Clean­ing up cryp­to: How much enforce­ment is too much?