Binance France Replaces Changpeng Zhao with New Shareholders
Binance France has replaced co-founder Changpeng Zhao with two new shareholders to maintain its operational status in France and comply with local regulations in the European Union’s second-largest economy.
This unexpected move follows Zhao’s legal issues. It is part of a broader effort to align with European Union standards as new regulatory frameworks like the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation take effect.
BINANCE FRANCE DUMPS CZ AMID HOPES IT WON’T BE SHUT DOWN IN EUROPE
– @Binance France has replaced its founder @CZ_Binance with two new company shareholders, owing to European regulatory pressure.
– French regulations enforce that a company’s majority shareholder cannot be a… https://t.co/OVN15EIdqt pic.twitter.com/FJ7jrXFZzB
— BSCN (@BSCNews) May 28, 2024
Changpeng Zhao, also known as CZ, previously owned 100% of Binance France. However, following his guilty plea for violating US banking laws last November , Binance needed to restructure its ownership to comply with French regulations and safeguard its operational status in the EU.
Under these regulations, a company’s majority shareholder cannot have a criminal record. Binance has introduced Yulong Yan and Lihua He as the new majority shareholders of Binance France, each holding 50% of the shares. Both are co-founding team members of Binance.
Yulong Yan, also known as Allan Yan, was identified in the original Binance whitepaper and was a co-founder and product director of Bijie Tech, a Chinese exchange services company that was shut down by the Chinese government in 2017.
Although Lihua He was not mentioned in the 2017 Binance whitepaper, he remains an enigmatic figure with little publicly available information. A Binance spokesperson declined to provide
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