The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is appealing a recent court decision that approved Binance.US’ acquisition of embattled crypto lender Voyager Digital.
In a new court filing, the DOJ is appealing New York Judge Michael Wiles’ decision to allow Voyager to sell $1.3 billion worth of assets to Binance.US, the US branch of the world’s largest crypto exchange platform by volume.
The deal also included a $20 million payout to customers of Voyager, which went bankrupt last year after troubled crypto firm Three Arrows Capital (3AC) failed to pay back a loan worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Earlier this week, Judge Wiles rejected the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) argument that the deal between the two companies should be stopped because it could possibly violate securities law.
According to the SEC, the redistribution of the firm’s funds to account holders may be a violation of the Securities Act of 1933.
“Here, the transactions in crypto assets necessary to effectuate the rebalancing, the redistribution of such assets to Account Holders, may violate the prohibition in Section 5 of the Securities Act of 1933 against the unregistered offer, sale or delivery after sale of securities.”
However, Judge Wiles said he doesn’t believe this is a valid reason for the deal to be put on hold.
“I cannot put the entire case into [an] indeterminate deep freeze while regulators figure out whether they believe there are problems with the transaction and plan.”
If the deal breaks apart or is successfully stymied by regulators, Voyager may still choose to liquidate on its own to pay back its customers. However, Voyager’s lead investment banker Brian Tichenor says that the deal with Binance.US would give the customers about $100 million more, according to previous reports.
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