Settle Richard Jones has authorized worn Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao’s guilty plea to money laundering allegations, but is yet to resolve whether or not he can leave the U.S. old to his sentencing hearing in February.

“This Courtroom, having thought of as the Memoir and Suggestion of the US Magistrate Settle, to which there has no timely objection […] accepts the plea of guilty of the defendant,” wrote Settle Jones in a Dec. 6 submitting.

“The defendant is adjudged guilty of such offense.”

Prosecutors at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) charged Binance and Zhao with violating the Financial institution Secrecy Act (BSA), alleging that below Zhao’s direction, the alternate didn’t uphold sanctions and broke money transmitting regulations.

As piece of a settlement model out prosecutors, Binance paid a $4.3 billion vibrant, with Zhao personally paying $50 million and agreeing to step down from his feature as CEO of Binance.

The Binance founder turned into released from custody on a $175 million interior most recognizable bond in November, with the preliminary terms of his free up allowing him to realize motivate home to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) except his Feb. 23 sentencing date subsequent year.

After prosecutors adverse these terms, nonetheless, Settle Jones ruled that Zhao would not be authorized to leave the U.S. except the court docket resolves the authorities’s motion for review, in which they argued that Zhao posed a “flight possibility.” Zhao’s attorneys countered the authorities’s motion with their very possess, pointing out that Zhao had demonstrated he didn’t intend to cruise on condition that he voluntarily flew to the U.S. to self-give up and plead guilty.

In the intervening time, Binance’s new CEO Richard Teng grew to became the topic of controversy on Tuesday, when he apparently averted a Financial Instances journalist’s questions on Binance’s world headquarters and whether or not the firm would possess an audit.

“Why safe you basically feel so entitled to those solutions … Is there a necessity for us to fragment all of this data publicly? No,” said Teng in a video interview with FT.

Teng lastly disclosed that Binance had submitted to audits within the areas in which it is regulated and that its European headquarters had been in France, whereas its Center East headquarters had been in Dubai. He said the firm’s world headquarters might perchance perchance be made public “as and when it’s relevant.”