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In summary
- Amrita Srivastava sued Binance, alleging that she was fired after reporting bribery within the company.
- The former executive claimed that a colleague accepted a bribe to speed up the integration of a client, which she reported to her superiors.
- Binance denied the allegations, stating that his dismissal was due to poor performance and not retaliation related to his complaints.
A former executive at Binance, the world’s leading Cryptocurrency exchange, has sued the company, alleging she was fired after reporting concerns about bribery.
Amrita Srivastava, a former senior Binance employee based in London, raised the allegations in an employment tribunal, according to a Nov. 28 report from Bloomberg. She claims that a co-worker accepted a bribe “under the guise of providing consulting services” that would expedite the client’s integration into Binance.
“My experience at Binance has been personally detrimental to my career, an impact that I will need to continue to undo for years to come,” Srivastava said in a presentation to the audience.
The news follows reports in May about Binance firing the researcher who uncovered some clients’ involvement in pump-and-dump and wash trading schemes. The company considered the evidence against its “VIP” clients insufficient and fired the head of the investigation team a week after receiving the report.
The coworker in question—who has since left Binance—was also allegedly pretending not to work for the company. Srivastava worked remotely on Binance’s platform that connects external brokers and clients to the exchange.
“I wasn’t prepared to look the other way when someone had defrauded a client and was still part of the team—some things are just right and wrong, and asking for a bribe and defrauding a client wasn’t a gray area—it’s definitely wrong.” Srivastava said in a witness statement.
A Binance representative told Decrypt that the company was “aware of the baseless allegations made by Ms. Srivastava.” The company claims she was terminated due to “poor performance” and “the decision to terminate her employment for poor performance preceded concerns she raised about an issue that was already known and under investigation by our internal audit team.”
“For the avoidance of doubt, Binance has strict policies against retaliation and bribery,” the company spokesperson concluded.
In her lawsuit against Binance Europe, she claims that she informed her managers about the bribery in April 2023 and was fired a month later. The exchange’s lawyer argues that the company was already aware of the incident and decided to let it go due to concerns about its performance.
“The decision to terminate his employment for poor performance preceded concerns he raised about an issue that was already known and under investigation by our internal audit team,” Binance told Bloomberg.
Srivastava joined the exchange in April 2022 after working at Mastercard as head of fintech coverage for Western Europe. She claims to have sensed that her colleagues wanted to “fix” Binance and make it comply with regulations.
Instead, he lamented a chaotic work environment where “the pressure was on getting deals delivered.”
Edited by Stacy Elliott.
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