FTX files lawsuit against Binance and its former chief executive seeking $1.8bn

FTX filed a lawsuit against Binance Holdings and its former chief executive Changpeng Zhao, seeking to claw back almost $1.8 billion it alleges was fraudulently transferred by Sam Bankman-Fried.

Binance, Zhao and other Binance executives received the funds as part of a July 2021 share repurchase deal with Mr Bankman-Fried, the FTX co-founder, who is now in prison. In that transaction, they sold stakes of about 20 per cent in FTX’s international unit and 18.4 per cent in its US-based entity, according to a legal filing from the FTX estate on Sunday.

Mr 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 Mr 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 November 6, 2022 tweet by Mr 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 on Monday. A representative for Mr Zhao didn’t immediately reply to an emailed request for comment.

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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 non-profit 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,” an official for FWD.us said.