Forbes: Who is the mysterious CFO who manages Binance’s “money bag”?

In the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s ( SEC ) lawsuit against cryptocurrency exchange Binance and its founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ), one name comes up too many times: Guangying “Heina” Chen.

When Binance established its U.S. entity in 2019, Chen’s name was listed as a signatory on its bank account. The name also appeared on the bank account and registration documents for a company secretly formed by CZ in Switzerland that allegedly artificially inflated the crypto trading volume of Binance.US. In the SEC’s allegations against Binance for “fraudulently inflating trading volume,” the agency mentioned the “backend manager” who executed the fake trades: Guangying Chen.

Chen appears to have no official title at Binance and has not made public appearances, although internal Binance documents obtained by the SEC describe her job as "Financial Director." The company did not disclose Chen's presence until CZ's blog post last September, which described Chen as overseeing "management and settlement." However, a Forbes investigation found that Chen controlled more bank accounts and served as a director of Binance entities than any other executive besides CZ.

According to SEC documents, she currently serves as a director of eight major Binance companies and is a signatory to dozens of bank accounts for 27 entities registered in 13 countries, overseeing finances and Binance’s sprawling network of affiliates that have processed $148 billion in deposits and withdrawals since 2019. Bank accounts at Signature Bank and Silvergate Bank — both of which collapsed in March — were either closed or had zero balances by May of this year.

“Heina is someone CZ trusts, and she’s the gateway to the Binance vault,” said a former Binance executive who worked with Chen and Zhao.

A Forbes review of court records, land deeds and corporate documents from China, Malta, Singapore, Switzerland and Turkey, as well as interviews with four former Binance employees and an outside consultant who knew or worked with Chen, paints a portrait of a mysterious executive who has followed Zhao around the world.

According to court documents, she has received at least $32 million in her personal account since 2019 and signed some of Binance's most suspicious and important business transactions, including allegedly artificially increasing the platform's trading volume to stimulate customer and investor interest - the focus of the SEC's fraud charges. She is also responsible for managing multiple companies that support CZ's high-end consumption, including the purchase of a $55 million jet and an $11 million yacht, according to the SEC.

Such transactions are now at the heart of Binance’s regulatory woes, with numerous investigations by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission ( CFTC ). The exchange is also reportedly facing a Justice Department investigation over allegations that Binance or its executives violated Russian sanctions and anti-money laundering laws, with Senator Elizabeth Warren calling on the Justice Department to investigate allegations that the company lied to Congress. (Binance responded to Warren’s letter, saying that the company “supports U.S. efforts to take a comprehensive look at regulations” and “takes compliance issues very seriously.”)

In a statement released on June 5, Binance said it was “disappointed” by the SEC’s complaint and that the company would “vigorously defend” any allegations that Binance.US user assets were at risk.

While Binance survived the implosion of its biggest rival FTX and the crisis that led to the closure of crypto lending platforms Celsius and Genesis , it is now facing an existential threat.

Binance, which claims to have no headquarters, has withdrawn from or been banned in at least 10 countries. In April, Australian authorities revoked the financial services license of Binance's Australian subsidiary, resulting in its revocation by the payment provider. In May, the Ontario Securities Commission launched an investigation into whether Binance was circumventing the province's securities laws, which led to Binance's withdrawal from Canada two days later and subsequent application to withdraw the investigation.

Since the SEC charges became public, Binance’s trading volume has fallen by 32%. In the United States, where Binance serves more than 5 million customers, trading volume has fallen by more than 75%, and the SEC has requested a freeze of more than $2.6 billion in assets, effectively halting Binance’s operations in its largest market. Binance suspended all U.S. dollar deposits at its U.S. branch last week.

“The [SEC] is not interested in a resolution that would allow Binance to operate in anything close to its current form,” said Renato Marrioti, a former prosecutor in the U.S. Department of Justice’s securities and commodities fraud section.

Despite regulatory headwinds, CZ remains one of the richest people in crypto; Forbes estimates he is worth at least $10 billion, though that number could be much higher depending on what percentage of Binance’s profits he pockets personally. SEC records and corporate filings in 30 jurisdictions reviewed by Forbes indicate Zhao owns 100% of Binance’s international operations and 81% of Binance.US.

A former Binance executive said the mysterious Chen is still in charge of Zhao and Binance’s assets: “Heina has all the control when it comes to money-related matters, and there are very few people that Zhao really trusts.”

Binance had attempted and failed to acquire a bank in Liechtenstein, and Wei Zhou, Binance’s chief financial officer at the time, negotiated the deal and met with local regulators. But it was Chen who wired $5 million from a Binance bank account held at Bank Frick & Co. in Liechtenstein for escrow, according to two people familiar with the matter and bank documents seen by Forbes.

In a proof of assets and liabilities form for Binance shared with Forbes by the Liechtenstein regulator, DocuSign is signed by “Heina,” not “Zhou,” who did not respond to Forbes’ request for comment.

One of the sources added: “It all comes down to her, whether it’s money transfers or confirmation letters, she’s the authorised person on all the bank accounts. She’s the real CFO.”

Little is known about Chen’s life before Binance. According to her LinkedIn, she holds an undergraduate degree in accounting from the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics and an MBA from the National University of Singapore. Despite Chen’s prominent role at Binance since its founding in 2017, the company only acknowledged her existence last September. In a blog post titled “Who is Guangying Chen, and is Binance a ‘Chinese company’?” CZ wrote that he met her in 2010 “when she was working at [his] friend’s wine estate.” According to a former Binance executive, Chen also served drinks at the poker nights he hosted in Shanghai: “He changed her life.”

In the blog post, Zhao said Chen managed back-office functions at a “large commercial bank” before hiring her to work at his new cryptocurrency company, Bijie Tech, a cloud services startup that provides software that supports cryptocurrency trading. There, she will “manage the back office, as the early team is mostly engineers,” Zhao wrote, saying he had appointed her, a Chinese citizen, as the listing representative “because of China’s restrictive laws on foreigners (CZ is a Canadian citizen).

Chinese corporate records reviewed by Forbes show that while Zhao is listed as CEO of Shanghai Bijie Network Technology Co., it is Chen who controls the company on paper. She owns 93% of the shares and is listed as the founder and sole legal representative.

Zhao launched Binance in Shanghai in 2017 after Bijie was reportedly forced to shut down due to rampant fraud. Again, corporate documents show that the company was established under Chen’s name as the legal representative, and she holds 80% of the shares.

Rumors that Chen secretly controlled Binance began to circulate in 2020 after a Weibo user blasted Binance, claiming his friend had lost 167 bitcoins on the platform. Several Chinese websites published his posts and emails from Chen in which she warned that “your actions may be seen as a malicious attack, and we may sue for damage to reputation, manipulation of public opinion, or even defamation.”

Chen appears to have held different titles at different times. On her LinkedIn, she says she is “responsible for the middle and back office, including finance/HR/administration/liquidation, etc.” and lists her title as “co-founder” of the “company,” without mentioning Binance. In Telegram messages seen by Forbes, former Binance CFO Wei Zhou called her Zhao’s “personal financial manager.” In a 2020 certification form shared with Liechtenstein regulators, Chen listed her title as “head of back office”; the SEC referred to Chen as Binance’s “back office manager” in its complaint. In emails introducing Chen to outsiders seen by Forbes, Chen is introduced simply as Binance’s “vice president.” A former Binance executive who dealt with Chen on the phone told Forbes that they believed she had no official title, but that her role was in the “finance department.”

CZ has also tried to downplay her role: In a blog post last year, he said Chen was in charge of the “management and liquidation team.” But while Zhao claims Chen is primarily a legal representative and Binance remains in Shanghai, Chen’s central role in Zhao’s corporate entities extends far beyond the Chinese market. According to Malta’s commercial registry, Zhao established two companies in Malta in 2018 after a Chinese government crackdown on cryptocurrency exchanges forced Binance to find a new home, and the following year appointed Chen as the director and sole legal representative of both companies.

“When most of us left China in 2017, Guangying had to leave her family, her home, and her friends behind,” Zhao wrote last year. “It was a huge sacrifice, and she was one of the few who truly understood the impact it had on all of our team.”

As for her current whereabouts, Zhao said in a 2022 blog post that Chen is a "passport holder of a European country, where she lives peacefully with her family."

But documents now reviewed by Forbes at the Malta and Singapore business registries appear to contradict this. According to the Malta registry, Chen updated her documents in June last year to register a new Chinese passport. China does not allow dual citizenship, and the documents show she lives in Singapore, which seems to contradict Zhao's claim that Chen is "living quietly" in a "European country." Her LinkedIn shows she lives in the United Arab Emirates, where Zhao moved from Singapore in 2022.

“Wherever [Zhao] went, [Chen] moved,” said one former Binance employee.

Binance’s plans to relocate to Malta fell through when the country’s financial services regulator declared the company unauthorized to conduct cryptocurrency business in February 2020, according to court documents and corporate filings. As Binance expanded into new markets, Chen’s management scope also expanded, serving as a director and bank account signatory for subsidiaries in at least 15 countries, from Canada to Kazakhstan.

In 2019, when Binance launched Binance US as part of a plan to convince regulators that U.S. customer data and funds were managed and stored by a U.S. team, Chen was named as an officer and bank account signatory to operate the U.S. branch. Binance.US’s 2019 year-end balance sheet cited in SEC filings showed Chen was the sole signatory for all nine of the company’s bank accounts at the time.

To grow the local business, Zhao set up a new company based in Switzerland and led by Chen — SEC filings and corporate records show her as a director and bank signatory — to operate the trades. The company, Sigma Chain AG, was set up as a market maker, using “revenue generated from the difference between bid and ask prices” and backed by “funds from [Zhao’s] personal account,” according to a registration document.

According to the SEC’s complaint, unlike typical market makers that work as independent high-volume traders on an exchange, Sigma Chain was used to artificially boost trading volume on Binance, a practice commonly known in the U.S. as “wash trading” — sending crypto assets back and forth to create the illusion of user activity.

The SEC said Sigma Chain was engaging in wash trading the day Binance.US launched in September 2019. In the summer of 2021, when Binance.US was in talks to raise $200 million from investors including Foundation Capital and Circle Ventures (a deal that was ultimately completed in March 2022), the SEC said Sigma Chain accounts were making false trades in 51 of the 58 cryptocurrencies available on the platform.

In the first half of 2022, as Binance.US listed dozens of new crypto assets, Sigma Chain allegedly wash traded 48 of the 51 newly listed assets.

Internally, Sigma Chain’s activities have also raised concerns among Binance.US employees. Catherine Coley, former CEO of Binance.US, raised concerns in 2019, saying in a message to Binance’s then-CFO Wei Zhou that having Chen as a signatory on a bank account would be “a red flag for exposing Binance to regulators.” In January 2021, an employee expressed shock when a sales director told Binance.US CEO and employees that 20 accounts belonged to Sigma Chain.

In the process, the lines between Binance subsidiaries and entities controlled by Zhao and Chen began to blur. According to the SEC, entities owned by Zhao and controlled by the two were used to mix approximately $11 billion in customer deposits with Binance's bank accounts. In addition to wash trading, Sigma Chain was used to purchase an $11 million yacht and pay $32 million to Chen personally.

Chen was also a bank signatory on multiple transactions that allowed Zhao to maintain a lavish lifestyle despite his resistance to material luxuries and traditional banking; “No house, no car, no boat, and no fiat currency,” he tweeted in 2020.

Another company, Binance Capital Management Co. Ltd., based in the British Virgin Islands, spent $55 million on a jet and transferred $62.5 million to one of CZ’s personal bank accounts, according to SEC filings. The company and two other Binance entities controlled by the two provided another $178 million to two Singaporean companies controlled by Zhao and Chen.

Working so closely with CZ hasn’t always been beneficial for Chen. In a blog post last year, Zhao expressed regret for asking Chen to serve as his legal representative in 2015 because she was under increased scrutiny. “She and her family have been targeted and harassed by the media and online trolls, and if I had known it would have such a negative impact on her life, I would never have asked her to take that seemingly insignificant step,” CZ said.