Binance Executive Exodus Continues With Russian Management's Resignation

Pressure is mounting on Binance as two more top executives resigned from their position at the embattled crypto exchange yesterday.

Gleb Kostarev, vice president for Eastern Europe, and Vladimir Smerkis, general manager for Russia and director of the Commonwealth of Independent States, both announced their departures on Facebook. Kostarev has also revealed that he had also relinquished his role in the Asia-Pacific region several months ago.

Neither of them have provided reasons for their resignations, but in his post, Kostarev thanked Binance CEO CZ and co-founder He Yi for the opportunities that they provided.

During his employment, Kostarev had launched a regulated exchange in Kazakhstan, as well as suspending then restoring Russian trading in response to US sanctions.

Russia’s importance to Binance

These resignations come as Binance considers leaving the Russian market altogether, amid sanctions on Russian businesses and individuals.

Such a move would indeed be quite a big shakeup for Binance, since Russia is the top market in terms of user visits to Binance.com, accounting for around 6.3 per cent of total visits.

In the wake of the resignations, Russians raised concerns that Binance might not be able to continue operating in the country.

Thus far, Binance has already cut ties with several Russian banks in an attempt to comply with international sanctions.

Binance’s exit would also cut many Russians out from the international financial system, since their banks have also been expelled from the SWIFT network, which is a secure system used to transmit banking orders to move assets between major banks.

Aside from compliance with US sanctions, Binance has also been targetted by US regulators, most prominently the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodities and Futures Commission, for regulatory breaches.

Similar actions have also been launched in Canada, Australia, and France

Prominent companies have also cut ties with Binance, including payments giant Mastercard.

Management woes

Aside from Kostarev and Smerkis, Binance has seen a slew of resignations from their top executives.

Earlier this year, Binance lost General Hon Ng, Chief Strategy Officer Patrick Hillmann, SVP for Compliance Steven Christie, and former IRS agent Matthew Price.

In a tweet, Hillman had confirmed that he was leaving, but insisted that he was leaving on good terms and thanked CZ for leadership.

More recently, Binance’s head of Asia Pacific Leon Foong also resigned his position. Foong had been responsible for expanding Biannce’s reach into Southeast Asian countries like Thailand, as well as East Asian countries like Japan and South Korea.

His exit was swiftly followed by the resignation of Binance’s Head of Product Mayur Kamat.

The string of departures has led many to speculate that Binance is under serious pressure, particularly from regulators, though Biannce CEO CZ has denied this, and attributed the resignations to the team members “growing into bigger roles, some outside of Binance”.

He also claimed that he had made references for many of them, and that Binance was supportive of everyone. He ended the tweet with a call for everyone to “ignore FUD, keep building”.