Gary Gensler United States Securities and Commission Chairperson. The individual who is currently undertaking a rigorous enforcement campaign against companies operating in the cryptocurrency industry once offered to serve as an adviser to Binance, according to the lawyers for Binance and founder Changpeng Zhao.
According to the documents filed by the SEC on Wednesday, June 7, they indicate that attorneys from Gibson Dunn and Latham & Watkins, two of Binance’s law firms,alleged Gary Gensler offered to serve as an adviser to the Binance crypto exchange in March 2019 conversations with Binance executives and Changpeng Zhao. They have also mentioned that Gary Gensler eventually met Changpeng Zhao in Japan for lunch later that month, as the filing claims.
Based on information obtained from messages and documents spanning from 2018 to 2020, as reported by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), Ella Zhang, who held the position of head of Binance’s venture investing division at the time, along with Harry Zhou, co-founder of Koi Trading, a firm invested in by Binance, had an initial meeting with Gensler in October 2018. During the meeting, they proposed an advisory role to Gensler, which he subsequently turned down.
According to the recent submission, the lawyers from Gibson and Latham state that Zhao maintained communication with Gensler even after their meeting in March. Furthermore, upon Gensler’s request, Zhao participated in an interview with him for a cryptocurrency course he was teaching at MIT.
At the time, Gensler was a professor of the practice of global economics and management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management.
Later, he was appointed head of the Security Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2021 by United States President Joe Biden in February 2021, and he officially took office on April 17, 2021.
