Binance CFO resigns after hack, compliance scrutiny mounts

Social media was buzzing when Binance CFO Kaiser Ng resigned just nine days after the exchange lost $6.3 billion to North Korean hackers.

Ng's initial resignation post received half a million views on X, an additional quarter million via Bloomberg, and millions more elsewhere.

Binance co-CEO Yi stated that the succession had been in preparation for six months. However, the timing corresponds with a Bloomberg investigation into the depletion of Binance's team monitoring financial crime.

Two months prior to this, Fortune had reported that Binance terminated five internal investigators who had flagged potential breaches of Iranian sanctions.

A Senate inquiry into suspected Iran-related sanctions violations by Binance began in February. That same month, the New York Times documented $1.7 billion flowing from two Binance accounts to Iranian entities, prompting congressional oversight.

Prior to those dismissals, President Donald Trump drew public attention to Binance's misconduct by pardoning founder Changpeng Zhao.

As Binance grapples with turmoil in its financial oversight arrangements, the personal wealth of Changpeng Zhao has been on the decline.

Binance CFO departs as third-party oversight changes

The reasons given for important exits at Binance this year have been twofold. At the same time, monitoring from outside the firm tends to be brief and unsettled.

Beyond Binance's own compliance operations, Mazars issued only one reserves report for Binance, in December 2022.

As part of its November 2023 guilty plea, Binance took on a three-year DOJ supervision until May 2027 and a five-year FinCEN monitoring period lasting to May 2029.

Binance hired Grant Thornton as a consultant in September 2024, though the firm has no auditing engagement with the exchange.

Kaiser Ng resigned on Saturday from the CFO position he had held since January 2022. In his departure message, he acknowledged the help of "advisors and auditors."