The CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Binance has sued renowned media outlet, Bloomberg BusinessWeek for defamation. CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) has started a legal battle with Binance because a subsidiary of Binance in Hong Kong accused the CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange of managing a Ponzi scheme. In turn, the Binance exec has now filed a lawsuit against the media outlet.
Modern Media Company (a media entity that manages Bloomberg’s content in Hong Kong) published an article titled “Can Crypto’s Richest Man Stand the Cold?” some time ago. The controversy them ensued when Bloomberg BusinessWeek renamed the article “Zhao Changpeng’s Ponzi Scheme.”
The column claimed that Binance was involved in money laundering to the tune of billions of dollars and that they had suspicious connections to the Dark web and other outlawed North Korean hacking groups. However, Modern Media’s biggest accusation was that Changpeng Zhao runs and controls an investment fraud that lures unsuspecting clients to invest their wealth through fake promises of large profit.
Expectedly, Zhao debunked the column in a Twitter post. Reports from a recent filing indicate that he even sued Bloomberg’s Hong Kong subsidiary for defamation. CZ’s legal counsel also alleged that the original English language transcription of the article was also very highly defamatory. The attorneys argued that the information in the article was unfounded and was engineered to mislead readers to believe that Binance and CZ are engaging in criminal activities behind the scenes.
Something similar happened in January 2020 when Forbes published an article that classified Binance’s operations as illegal. They also said in the article that Binance deceived financial regulators and facilitated money laundering. Binance sued Forbes for that article claiming that those statements were false and highly defamatory. Surprisingly, Binance dropped the lawsuit without any explanation in the following year and the two companies appeared to have buried the hatchet since it was announced earlier this year that Binance invested $200 Million in Forbes.
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