Former Brazilian Central Bank President, Economy Minister Joins Binance As Advisor

Binance, the biggest crypto exchange by trading volume, has confirmed the appointment of former Brazilian Central Bank President and Economy Minister Henrique Meirelles as an advisor.

According to a report by Brazilian newspaper O Globo on Sunday, Meirelles, who served as the president of the Central Bank of Brazil from 2003 to 2011 and the economy minister from 2016 to 2018, is now a part of the new global advisory board of Binance and the exchange plans to release more details in the near future.

"Binance confirms the participation of Henrique Meirelles in the company's new global advisory board and reports that it will release more details about this initiative soon," the company said in a statement after the Brazilian newspaper's report.

It seems that Binance is taking regulatory compliance very seriously and adding a high-profile economist to its advisory board might be beneficial for the exchange in terms of securing a suitable position with the regulators.

Meanwhile, Binance is also in talks with Nigerian authorities and plans to create a crypto city similar to Dubai's virtual free zones. This is the first such step in West Africa and the goal is to provide a friendly legal framework and tax incentives. Nigeria might be a good market for Binance as there are currently 22 million crypto holders in the country.

On the other hand, U.S. federal prosecutors have requested information (to be submitted voluntarily) from Binance regarding the exchange's anti-money laundering policies and communications of the firm's CEO Changpeng Zhao with other executives in 2020.

Zhao tweeted that he voluntarily provided all the information requested by the prosecutors while adding that the messages with the executives "are semi-public anyway."

As per a previous report, Zhao recently confirmed that the exchange is not "Chinese" and questioned why Binance is being labeled as a "Chinese company, just because of my Chinese ethnicity." He revealed that he has been a Canadian citizen for over 30 years.

The compliance efforts of crypto exchange are not going unnoticed as recently, another crypto exchange FTX, headed by Sam Bankman-Fried, confirmed that former Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Commissioner, Jill Sommers, has joined the firm's Board of Directors.