Last year, a group of Italian Binance users moved approached the Swiss blockchain consortium searching for exhortation on the most proficient method to recuperate losses attached to blackouts or service as indicated by Michele Ficara Manganelli, head of the consortium.
“Being Italian-speaking and having a more developed market than the Italian one, we are one of the primary concerns of reference for Italian financial backers,” Manganelli said in an email to CoinDesk. The consortium brought in Milan-based law firm Lexia Avvocati to address the financial backers.
Despite the fact that Binance proposed to repay impacted financial backers, the proposed pay was an “unimportant” sum, as per Francesco Dagnino, managing partner at Lexia Avvocati.
“We’ve been told by some investors that even those who accepted were not refunded,” Dagnino said during an interview with CoinDesk, referring to Binance’s offer to compensate users for losses sustained due to the outages.
Binance was also offering futures trading to Italian customers without regulatory approval and without complying with local laws, Dagnino said, addressing the other allegation against Binance. “It is absolutely clear that when you are selling a future, especially with that type of leverage, it doesn’t matter what the underlying asset is, it’s always a derivative and always a financial product,” Dagnino said.
Dagnino said the next step is for the court to decide on whether it will accept the class-action lawsuit, after which investors can begin to join the suit. There are at least 100 investors involved in the case, but more will join, Dagnino said. Mandanelli added that the suit will be open to Italian and European Binance investors seeking damages.
Binance has not yet joined the proceeding, which means it has not filed any statements of defense before the deadline set at 10 days before the hearing. Dagnino says it’s not mandatory to file anything, and although he is uncertain if Binance will show up at the hearing, he’s hopeful it will, given the company’s recent efforts to register an office in Italy and be entered into the list of virtual asset service providers operating in the country.
“[Binance] made major announcements about their interest in the Italian market and the Italian people. So I don’t know. … I would expect that they want to clarify these matters. But we will see,” Dagnino said.
If someone from Binance does not show up on Sept. 15 at the Court of Milan, a judge will decide on the case without Binance present and the company will lose the right to file statements of defense.
Binance did not respond to requests for comment by press time.
SOURCE: CoinDeck
