Sao Paolo Court Ruled Against Binance in User Withdrawal Related Case

A court in Sao Paolo, Brazil, ruled against Binance in a case in which the leading cryptocurrency exchange faced a withdrawal-related complaint. A user, who introduced a lawsuit against the exchange because he couldn’t retrieve his funds from the platform, received almost $2,000 in damages and the funds deposited as part of the court decision in September.

Local courts have begun to deal with cryptocurrency exchange-related cases in Brazil. Binance, one of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges in the market, lost a case derived from the inability of processing withdrawals for a customer in Sao Paolo in September.

According to recent reports, the customer who filed the complaint alleged the exchange was not able to process a withdrawal of almost $14,500 during a period in which Binance had suspended direct deposits and withdrawals in the country. The customer affected told the court that the funds would be used to pay for health expenses.

The court ruled in favor of the customer, ordering the exchange to execute the pending withdrawals, and awarding almost $2,000 in moral damages. Judge Rafael Almeida Moreira de Souza, who was in charge of the case, stated:

Values ​​are essential for the survival, with dignity, of the applicant. Reparation for moral damages should serve to compensate the victim and also punish the offender, so that similar conduct does not occur again.

Metropoles, a local newspaper, reported about another similar case that was resolved in Dec. 2021, when a judge ordered an exchange to allow a customer to withdraw funds blocked due to their alleged relationship with a hacking attack.

The case is the consequence of measures Binance had to take in June when Capitual, the payments provider of the exchange in Brazil, ceased to process Binance orders. The company updated its platform to comply with the requirements that the Central Bank of Brazil implemented to allow third parties to transact on its PIX payments network.

The situation led Binance to announce it would take legal action against Capitual for this service suspension. At the time, Capitual, which also served other exchanges in the country, explained that Binance failed to adapt its tech platform to comply with the new legal requirements.

The suspension, which lasted for over a week, ended with the inclusion of a new temporary payments partner, called Latam Gateway, while Binance was exploring the possibility of acquiring Sim;paul Investimentos, a Brazilian-regulated brokerage company.

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