Binance founder and former chief Changpeng Zhao, who pleaded guilty to violating US law by failing to implement a programme to prevent money laundering, arrives for his sentencing in federal district court in Seattle, Washington. 30 April 2024. (Photo: Reuters / Deborah Bloom) 
Binance, Zhao and other Binance executives received the funds as part of a July 2021 share repurchase deal with Bankman-Fried, the FTX co-founder who is now in prison. In that transaction, they sold stakes of about 20% in FTX’s international unit and 18.4% in its US-based entity, according to a legal filing from the FTX estate on Sunday.
Bankman-Fried paid for the stock repurchase using a mix of FTX’s exchange token FTT and Binance-branded coins BNB and BUSD valued at $1.76-billion at the time, according to the filing.
FTX and its sister trading house Alameda Research “may have been insolvent from inception and certainly were balance-sheet insolvent by early 2021,” the estate said in the filing. As a result, the share repurchase deal was made fraudulently, it alleged.
FTX also accused Zhao of posting a series of “false, misleading, and fraudulent tweets” shortly before FTX’s collapse, the content of which was “maliciously calculated to destroy his rival.” A 6 November 2022 tweet by Zhao stated that Binance intended to sell its FTT tokens, worth some $529-million at the time, causing withdrawals from the exchange to skyrocket.
“The claims are meritless, and we will vigorously defend ourselves,” a Binance spokesperson said in a statement on Monday. A representative for Zhao didn’t immediately reply to an e-mailed request for comment
The lawsuit is one of many filed by FTX in the bankruptcy court of Delaware; other defendants include former White House communications officer Anthony Scaramucci, digital-asset exchange Crypto.com and political groups such as the Mark Zuckerberg-founded FWD.us, court documents show.
“In 2021 and 2022, FWD.us was one of several organisations that received funding from a nonprofit organisation run by a family member of Sam Bankman-Fried to work on improving the family-based and employment-based immigration systems and enhancing American competitiveness,” a spokesperson for FWD.us said in an emailed statement.