He may be headed to prison next year after pleading guilty to U.S. criminal charges in November, yet 2023 held a silver lining for former Binance Holdings Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Changpeng Zhao: His estimated wealth ballooned by almost $25 billion this year, Bloomberg News reported. Toward the end of a year when Bitcoin rebounded more than 160% following a market collapse in 2022, Zhao tops a list of crypto entrepreneurs who saw their estimated net worth surge in 2023, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Coinbase Global Inc.
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Singapore
The founders of a failed crypto hedge fund have been hit with a billion-dollar asset freeze, the Wall Street Journal reported. Su Zhu and Kyle Davies, who ran collapsed crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital, have been ordered by a British Virgin Islands court not to sell assets worth $1.144 billion, according to Teneo, the liquidator of the fund. The order also names Kelly Chen, Davies's wife. It is the latest effort by Teneo to seize assets from Zhu and Davies after the failure of Three Arrows, which made the duo deeply controversial figures in crypto.
Three Arrows Capital co-founder Su Zhu for the first time faced questioning in a Singapore court about the crypto fund’s collapse, giving liquidators their best chance yet to gather information as they seek to recoup billions of dollars for creditors, Bloomberg News reported. The two-day court hearing this week required Zhu to respond to lawyers for the liquidator, Teneo, people familiar with the matter said. The lawyers sought details including how the fund failed and the whereabouts of assets, the people said, asking not to be named as the proceedings were private.
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Singapore awarded a batch of in-principle license approvals to stablecoin issuers, intensifying the competition among Asian financial hubs for a slice of a key crypto segment with a market value of $127 billion, Bloomberg News reported. The approvals for Paxos Digital Singapore Pte and StraitsX open up a pathway for issuing such tokens under regulatory oversight. Stablecoins are typically pegged 1-1 to major currencies and backed by reserves like cash and bonds.
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The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) on Thursday told DBS Group Holdings' unit DBS Bank and Citibank Singapore to conduct a thorough investigation after they failed to recover their systems fully within a required timeframe during an unscheduled outage on Oct. 14, Reuters reported. The central bank said unscheduled downtime for a critical system that affects a bank's operations or service to customers must not exceed four hours within any 12-month period. On Saturday Oct. 14, DBS's and Citibank's online banking and payment services went offline from around 3 p.m.
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Singapore’s financial regulator will conduct an on-site inspection of Credit Suisse Group AG after at least one of its customers was charged for money laundering in a scandal that has rocked the city-state, Bloomberg News reported. The local unit of Credit Suisse will be among banks the Monetary Authority of Singapore plans to examine to determine whether they properly handled the monitoring of wealthy clients. Officials from the regulator are set to interview personnel and review documents within weeks.
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Three Arrows Capital co-founder Su Zhu ended up in jail in Singapore after liquidators decided to apply maximum pressure following months of sparring over locating the failed crypto hedge fund’s assets, Bloomberg News reported. Days after securing a Singapore court order carrying a four-month prison term for failing to cooperate with the task of winding up the fund, liquidators tipped police off on Sept. 29 that Zhu was headed to Changi Airport.
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Singapore authorities seized or froze assets worth more than S$2.8 billion ($2 billion) in one of the city-state’s largest money laundering investigations, a senior official said on Tuesday while signaling the government could tighten immigration rules to curb illicit inflows, Bloomberg News reported. The amount disclosed to parliament by Second Minister for Home Affairs Josephine Teo is higher than the S$2.4 billion previously announced. The assets included 152 properties, 62 vehicles, thousands of bottles of liquor, cryptocurrencies, gold bars and jewellery.
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Authorities arrested disgraced crypto hedge fund co-founder Su Zhu Friday, the latest detainment of a star from the crypto industry’s last bull cycle, YahooFinance.com reported. Singaporean authorities apprehended Su Zhu, 36, Friday afternoon at the country’s Changi Airport while he was attempting to leave the country. Singaporean courts placed a “committal order” against him according to Teneo, the court-appointed joint liquidators in the bankruptcy for Zhu’s firm, Three Arrows Capital Ltd. The court order, placed on Sept.
Singapore's central bank said on Tuesday it was looking into whether banks involved in a S$2.4 billion ($1.75 billion) money laundering scandal in the global wealth hub had taken all reasonable steps to mitigate risks, Reuters reported. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) will take action if its findings reveal shortcomings in the banks' controls, a spokesperson said in an emailed statement. Singapore police last month arrested and charged 10 foreigners including from China, in one of the biggest anti-money laundering swoops.
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