Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, has been sued in the UK, with former executive Amrita Srivastava alleging that she was unfairly fired after reporting a colleague for taking bribes. In response, Binance said the dismissal was due to poor performance.
Bloomberg reports that Srivastava, who joined Binance in April 2022 from Mastercard Inc. as head of fintech for Western Europe, said she believes there is a genuine desire within the organization to help “fix” Binance and that the company’s management “aims to get their compliance in order.”
But she said she found the work environment increasingly “chaotic.” At Link, Srivastava said there was “a lot of pressure to get deals done.” Binance was eager to fill a “revenue gap” at Link after discovering that about 25% of the unit’s service revenue previously came from clients with ties to Iran.
Srivastava said she found her colleagues at Binance asking for bribes from Binance customers in the name of providing consulting services in order to speed up the cooperation process between the two parties.
Meanwhile, a client who frequently travelled to the UK had previously disclosed to Srivastava that he had also previously paid fees to her colleague.
In April 2023, Srivastava decided to report the incident to the company. The following month, she was fired by Binance.
“I couldn’t turn a blind eye when someone was defrauding clients and still working on the team,” she testified. “Something was just plain wrong.”
She went on to emphasize that “my experience at Binance damaged my entire career to the point where it would take me years to repair the damage.”
However, Binance’s lawyers refuted Srivastava’s allegations. Binance first clarified that Srivastava was fired not because she reported her colleagues to Binance for asking for bribes, but because Srivastava herself performed poorly at work.
Furthermore, in response to the lawsuit filed by Srivastava, Binance pointed out that the company's internal audit team had already known about it and launched an investigation. Therefore, there is no claim that Srivastava was fired because of her report.
Binance said in a statement: "The termination of her employment was due to poor performance, and the situation she raised has been known to our internal audit team and is under investigation."
“Binance itself has a policy of regularly clearing out underperforming employees.”
Employment tribunal awards for whistleblowers in the UK are unlimited, while awards for unfair dismissal are capped at £105,700.
“My experience at Binance has caused damage to my career that I will have to continue to undo in the years ahead,” Srivastava said in the hearing documents.
