December 19, 2022: –Binance Chief Executive Changpeng “CZ” Zhao is dismissing concerns that his firm could have $2.1 billion clawed back due to FTX’s bankruptcy proceedings in an appearance on Thursday and said he trusted his attorneys to handle things.

Andrew Ross Sorkin and Becky Quick pressurized Zhao on whether he anticipated being able to come back that $2.1 billion payment from FTX, which Binance is when it exited its 2019 Series A investment with FTX, to bankruptcy trustees which looked to claw back any fraudulent conveyances which make by FTX to outside businesses or investors.

“Is it possible to handle it if anyone asked you for $2.1 billion back,” Quick questioned him? “We are financially OK,” Zhao stated, which evaded a straight answer.

Suppose bankruptcy proceedings establish that a payment was made through the processes of fraud or that an individual will have reasonably known that a charge was fraudulent. According to the U.S. bankruptcy code, any beneficiary in a dual-year lookback window can have their profits clawed back by the trustee.

“Are you prepared to send that money to those people?” Sorkin asked Zhao.

“We’ll go to that to the lawyers. I think the legal team can handle it,” Zhao answers before attempting to pivot away to FTX’s well-documented spending habits.

Zhao told Sorkin that the repayment was a mixture of BUSD, BNB and FTT tokens. Zhao declared that the FTT portion of the compensation was significant but that the company had “forgotten” about it. “We have actual revenue,” Zhao said.