In Brief:
- Binance hires Amjad Qaqish as the Director of Global Suspicious Activity Report (SAR).
- Qaqish to oversee the crypto exchange’s suspicious activity reporting system.
The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, hired Amjad Qaqish as the director of global suspicious activity reporting(SAR). He is a former criminal investigation special agent at the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
During his 30-year career, Qaqish worked on cryptocurrency-related issues involving fraud, tax evasion, money laundering, and terrorism financing.
Qaqish will lead the Global SAR team, which monitors suspicious and unusual activity to prevent bad actors from taking advantage of the cryptocurrency industry.
The hiring is following the cryptocurrency exchange’s attempts to tighten up on regulatory compliance. Earlier this year, the exchange received plenty of warnings from financial watchdogs, pressuring it to become more active in terms of compliance.
Qaqish also stated this following his hire into Binance, “My interest in the cryptocurrency and digital asset industry started many years ago when I first supported IRS investigation of cases involving crypto. I furthered my interest in this field when I subsequently joined IRS CI’s Cyber Crime Unit. We had to learn the crypto industry in order to effectively investigate these cases and that led to an infectious intrigue and fascination with all things crypto.”
Binance is steadily building up its team, notably with the recent hire of Mark McGinness as its first chief regulatory liaison officer. Mark would be assisting the platform to transform into a financial institution and work with financial regulators.
