What’s worse than having money in your account and then suddenly receiving an email saying that you can’t access it because it presumably comes from illicit activities? That is what happened to a group of young Colombians who used to trade crypto in Binance —and they are not too happy about it.
For more than five months, a group of Colombian users has reported on social media that their accounts were blocked by Binance because they had received money from illicit activities, according to the FIOD (Tax Information and Investigation Service of the Netherlands). Some even reported that funds from their accounts had been subtracted without any authorization.
Several Binance users reported being blocked for more than 5 months
One of those affected is Andrea Torrente, who said in an interview for the Latin American crypto news site Criptonoticias that 15 days ago, she had to resort to legal channels through her lawyer to try to recover her account, which is blocked as of today.
However, he has not received an official response from Binance’s legal representative in Colombia or from the relevant authorities. In addition, she said that the only accounts that have been unblocked are those of people who did not receive a blocking notification from the FIOD.
” In theory this week marks the deadline by which Binance’s legal representative for Colombia and other authorities should be notified.”
Some users have up to $1 million in their accounts. One of the users said that he had more than $1 million in the exchange when his account was suspended. This made it impossible for him to profit from the Bitcoin rally and realize his gains, and so did many others like Juan Pombo, who had $143,000 blocked, which —as he says— left him “literally bankrupt.”
Although not all the affected crypto traders had similar amounts of money stored on the platform, the group is willing to go “to the last consequences” to get justice, even if they have to spend more money on lawyers than they have in their accounts.
Users can prove the legality of their funds.
Unlike Binance, the affected crypto traders claim to have the means to prove the origin of their funds through their financial statements. So all is not yet lost, and they could actually make some money if they can prove that they lost the opportunity to make a profit due to the platform’s negligence.
For example, Torrente used the platform for USDT arbitrage, taking advantage of the price variations in the exchange houses in Cali, Colombia, and Binance.
Some transactions were linked to the Dark Net.
Another particular case is that of César Maya, who was able to verify through the Chainalysis blockchain explorer that he had bought cryptocurrencies from people involved with the Dark Net without being aware of it. However, Binance blocked his account for a transaction that did not represent even 1% of his movements.
Maya’s lawyer assured her that the company could not hold his funds, as it is easy to prove good faith in the purchase of her assets. In addition, other users who had the same problem had their accounts and all their funds unblocked.
According to Torrente, the Asian giant washed its hands, saying that the users should write to the FIOD or the Dutch police, which is the entity that issued the order to freeze the funds.
“You ask them [Binance] to give you the freezing order that the FIOD issued and they tell you to write to a Dutch police courier. Almost six months ago we got the same response from Binance. They shut down our chats. Basically, they wash their hands. They say they have nothing to do with it and tell you to communicate with an email that is never answered.”
