The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Thursday filed a joint stipulation with Defendants Binance Holdings Limited, BAM Trading Services Inc., BAM Management US Holdings Inc., and Changpeng Zhao to dismiss, with prejudice, the Commission’s ongoing civil enforcement action against them.

In the exercise of its discretion and as a policy matter, the Commission determined that the dismissal of this action is appropriate. Furthermore, as stated in the joint stipulation, “the Commission’s decision to seek dismissal of this Litigation does not necessarily reflect the Commission’s position on any other litigation or proceeding.”

The SEC brought 13 charges against Binance and its founder Changpeng Zhao in June 2023.

The Commission alleged that, while Zhao and Binance publicly claimed that U.S. customers were restricted from transacting on Binance.com, Zhao and Binance in reality subverted their own controls to secretly allow high-value U.S. customers to continue trading on the Binance.com platform. Further, the SEC alleged that, while Zhao and Binance publicly claimed that Binance.US was created as a separate, independent trading platform for U.S. investors, Zhao and Binance secretly controlled the Binance.US platform’s operations behind the scenes.