November 17, 2020 | AtoZ Markets – Another lawsuit has been filed against BitMEX and its founders in the Northern District Court of California. Bucharest resident, Paun Gabriel-Razvan has accused the cryptocurrency derivatives exchange of market manipulation and money laundering.
HDR Global Trading Limited, Arthur Hayes, Ben Delo, Samuel Reid, and others are listed as defendants.
BitMEX and its founders hit with another manipulation lawsuit
The new 197-page document alleges that the defendants ignored Know Your Customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) requirements. BitMEX and its founders allegedly carried out activities that generated "billions of dollars in illegal income."
Similar accusations were filed on October 16 against BitMEX by Muscovite Dmitri Dolgov, a resident of Moscow, Russia. The documents contain similar wording: both plaintiffs accused the exchange of accepting money "from anyone" and gave the same example of how BitMEX benefited from illegal activities. Each of them allegedly suffered "significant damage."
The plaintiffs' interests are defended by attorney Pavel Pogodin from Consensus Law. A representative of the trading platform has called the claims unfounded.
"Pogodin in his actions resembles a patent troll, which submits identical statements against us on the basis of changed information from the Internet," - said in BitMEX.
BitMEX, however, intend to investigate the situation through the courts.
CFTC charged BitMEX owners with money laundering violations
As AtoZ Markets earlier reported, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) filed a lawsuit against BitMEX and its owners. They were accused of running an unregistered trading platform and violating CFTC rules in terms of conducting KYC/AML procedures.
The US Department of Justice (DoJ) has also charged the leadership of the trading platform with violating the Bank Secrecy Act.
BitMEX ex-CTO, Samuel Reed, was arrested, but a few days later released on $5 million bond. As a result of the CFTC and DoJ accusations, Arthur Hayes and Samuel Reed resigned their positions.
Recall that on November 1, BitMEX officials were accused of looting more than $440 million after receiving information about the ongoing investigations and civil and criminal charges.
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