Ex-Kraken employee claims exchange violated US sanctions

An ex-employee of Kraken has launched a lawsuit against the US cryptocurrency exchange – alleging sanction violations and disappearing customer funds.

Former Marine Nathan Runyon has also accused the company of harassment, discrimination, and wrongful termination.

A summary of the lawsuit document states Mr Runyon started working at Kraken as a financial analyst in March 2018.

Shortly after, Runyon claims he noticed that Kraken illegally operated in many US-sanctioned countries and raised his concerns “multiple times” to Kraken’s compliance officer. Runyon claims he dropped the issue when he felt it was clear nothing would be done.

The document also states that in March 2019, Runyon was asked by Kraken’s chief financial officer Kaiser Ng to reconcile Kraken customer account balances with the company’s bank balances.

Runyon alleges that Kraken’s bank accounts were millions of dollars short compared to the total customer funds the exchange should have had.

Runyon states he feared someone had found their way into the system and was stealing the funds, so informed senior management. He claims he was immediately removed from the project.

The lawsuit also alleges Runyon was censured for probing irregular stock options.

The document states that in May, Runyon noticed that two employees’ stock options vesting schedules were different to what had been set in November 2017.

He assumed it was an error and corrected it, the lawsuit states, but saw the numbers were changed back.

The document further states Runyon raised his concerns with senior management and was told the board was amending the terms and the employee didn’t know about it.

Runyon replied that this was legally questionable and would cause problems in an audit, but claims he was told to “stop worrying about it”. He was fired a short time later.

Kraken has been contacted for a comment by Coin Rivet.