The same week Binance.US announced that CEO Brian Shroder is stepping down, the Wall Street Journal reports that the firm’s head of legal, Krishna Juvvadi, and chief risk officer Sidney Majalya are also set to leave the exchange.
The departures come after Binance.US also laid off 100 employees, about a third of its workforce, earlier this week. Binance.US general counsel and chief legal officer Norman Reed has been appointed as interim CEO.
A spokesperson for Binance.US declined to comment.
Founded in 2019, the U.S.-based exchange was meant to serve U.S. customers with a more limited set of crypto-investing options than those available via Binance’s global platform. In the years since its launch, the company raised more than $200 million in a funding round that valued it at $4.5 billion, but it has also struggled with criticism, and legal action, from regulators, based in part on its tightly knit relationship with Changpeng Zhao’s Binance.
The Securities and Exchange Commission in June sued both Binance and Binance.US over allegedly violating U.S. securities laws and misleading investors. The agency leveled 13 charges against Binance and its associated entities accusing it of, among other things, allowing some U.S.-based customers to illegally access the main Binance platform.
The SEC also accused Binance and Zhao of commingling customer assets and of running Binance.US behind the scenes, despite the company’s constant claims that Binance.US is an independent company.
