Binance's $1 billion acquisition of bankrupt crypto lender Voyager Digital could be delayed or blocked by a US national security review, according to a Friday bankruptcy court filing.
The crypto exchange's US-based affiliate Binance. US intends
to buy Voyager's crypto lending platform with a bid that includes $20 million in
cash and crypto assets that will be used to repay Voyager's customers.
But the US Committee on Foreign Investment in the United
States (CFIUS), an interagency body that vets foreign investments into US
companies for national security risks, said Friday that its review "could
affect the ability of the parties to complete the transactions, the timing of
completion, or relevant terms."
Attorneys for Voyager and Binance.US did not immediately
respond to requests for comment Friday.
CFIUS has increasingly been used by Washington as a tool to
stymie Chinese investment in the United States.
Binance is owned by Chinese-born and Singapore-based
Changpeng Zhao and has no permanent headquarters. The company has been the
subject of a money laundering probe by US prosecutors. Binance.US, based in
Palo Alto, California, has said that its separate American exchange is
"fully independent" of the main Binance platform.
CFIUS did not mention any specific security concerns raised
by the Voyager acquisition in its court filing, but it said that bankruptcy
courts have sometimes ruled that national security concerns can prevent a
company from bidding on assets in bankruptcy.
Voyager filed for bankruptcy in July, months after the crash
of major crypto tokens TerraUSD and Luna sent shockwaves across the digital
asset industry.
Voyager initially planned to sell its assets to FTX Trading,
but that deal imploded when FTX went bankrupt in November amid a frenzy of
customer withdrawals and fraud allegations that led to the arrest of founder
Sam Bankman-Fried. -Reuters