Cryptocrime lawmaker Nicholas Quaid is leaving the DOJ
Nicholas Quaid, who helped develop the cryptocrime legislation regime, is leaving the Department of Justice, Coindesk wrote.
Quaid will leave his current role at the end of this week.
He was deputy commander of the DOJ and was there for about two years. His time there was spent fighting white collar crime and he had a focus on cryptocurrency.
Now he is likely to return to his former law firm Latham & Watkins, where he was a partner in New York.
There have been many interactions between federal law enforcement and the crypto industry, and there has been controversy for months over exactly how to regulate the growing sector.
In a recent case, the Department of Justice investigated Binance, wanting to see if the exchange violated the Bank Secrecy Act. The Bank Secrecy Act requires crypto exchanges to register with the Treasury Department and adhere to anti-money laundering rules if they do enough US business.
Read more: Report: Feds Investigate Binance Over Bank Secrecy Breach
The DOJ asked Binance in 2020 to release internal documents about its anti-money laundering measures, along with communications involving founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao.
The DOJ’s anti-money laundering division has asked Binance to turn over communications from Zhao and a dozen other people on various issues, including the company’s detection of illegal transactions. And prosecutors asked for 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. All of this was part of the investigation into the exchange’s compliance with US financial crime laws.
In response to PYMNTS, Binance said regulators are “reaching out to all major crypto exchanges to better understand our industry.”
“We are working with agencies regularly to resolve any outstanding issues,” the exchange wrote. “Binance has an industry-leading global security and compliance team that boasts more than 500 employees worldwide. Our team includes professionals with regulatory backgrounds, senior investigators from renowned blockchain analytics firms, and law enforcement agents who have led some of the largest cybercrime investigations.”
New PYMNTS study: How consumers use digital banks
A PYMNTS survey of 2,124 US consumers shows that while two-thirds of consumers have used FinTechs for some aspect of banking, only 9.3% call them their primary bank.
