Former Binance.US CEO Brian Brooks Says CZ Was in Charge of the Exchange, Not Him

Brian Brooks, the former CEO of Binance.US, revealed why he left his publish at the alternate, in court docket paperwork launched this week.

In an interview transcript from December 2021 with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Brooks was requested about Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao’s position at the US alternate. 

“What — what became clear to me at a certain point was CZ was the CEO of BAM Trading, not me. That’s what became clear at a certain point,” Brooks stated in the court docket paperwork launched on Tuesday. 

BAM Trading and BAM Management are doing enterprise as Binance.US, and are the crux of a latest enforcement motion towards Binance. 

Brooks resigned from his publish as CEO of Binance.US about 4 months after becoming a member of.

Before he was on the regulatory aspect as the Acting Comptroller of the Currency, which is a bureau inside the US Treasury that regulates and supervises nationwide banks, federal financial savings associations amongst others.

In his interview with the SEC in 2021, Brooks stated there’s a distinction between governance, which is the position of the board, and administration, which the CEO takes on. 

Brooks stated he was “overruled” when attempting to repair sure points. 

“All of the things that we had previously agreed and had worked on for 80 days were suddenly repudiated with no further discussion, and on that day, I realized, huh, I’m not actually the one running this company, and the mission that I believe I signed up for isn’t the mission,” Brooks stated. 

Fast ahead to SEC’s fees towards Binance

The SEC sued Binance and CZ over a “blatant disregard of the federal securities laws,” and racked up 13 fees towards them. 

The SEC accused Zhao and Binance of creating BAM Management and BAM Trading “as part of an elaborate scheme to evade” US legal guidelines, by asserting that the Binance.US platform was run independently, when as an alternative Zhao and Binance had rather a lot of management over that US entity.