Investigation: Binance's abandonment of the ruble and its transfer to CommEX may be related to illegal activities of the exchange
The interface and functionality of CommEX is very similar to Binance, and this platform appeared quite recently
The largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance will stop supporting transactions with the Russian ruble on its Binance P2P platform and will not put it in trading pairs from January 31, 2024, but users will be able to conduct transactions with the ruble on the CommEX platform.
Binance's refusal to work with the ruble is not an ethical, but a legal decision related to sanctions and suspicions that the exchange helped Russians circumvent restrictions with the help of cryptocurrency.
Source. This was stated by lawyer Yuriy Brisov, partner at Digital & Analogue Partners, in a comment to The Insider.
The CommEX platform, which suddenly appeared out of nowhere, is a small company that may be connected to Binance's illegal activities, he said.
"Recently, Binance was fined $4.3 billion and a criminal case was opened against its leader in the United States. Binance has changed its management, which has taken the trend to comply with the law. Now the exchange will very quickly review its relations with Russia and Russian users, in particular because the exchange is accused of facilitating the circumvention of sanctions and illegally supporting accounts of major cryptocurrency activity figures from Russia who are physically located in Russia and receive income there.
Moreover, it is suspected that most of these transactions are related to the financing of terrorist organizations such as Hamas, which is illegal regardless of sanctions and is an international crime," the lawyer explained.
Separately, Binance clarified that users will be able to conduct transactions with the ruble on the CommEX platform. Users will have to link their Binance account to their CommEX account and will be able to transfer their ruble assets there.
The CommEX domain has existed for a long time, it is completely anonymous, and the site itself was launched recently, writes investigative journalist Andrey Zakharov. In addition, CommEX's interface and functionality are very similar to those of Binance.
Brisov also emphasizes that the platform may somehow be related to Binance and appeared at the exact moment when the crypto exchange announced that operations with the ruble would be completely limited.
"CommEX is fully integrated with Binance via the ABI interface. You can transfer your Binance account to CommEX in just a couple of minutes. It's very convenient, but we don't know who CommEX is and who is behind them. This is a small company with no history, registered offshore. Most likely, CommEX is connected to the illegal activities of Binance," Zakharov said.
In September 2023, it became known that Binance was leaving Russia and would sell its local business to CommEX. Prior to that, Binance banned Russian customers from buying and selling any currency other than the ruble through its P2P service.
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