Cristiano Ronaldo SUED for ‘promoting unregistered securities’ as part of his NFT deal with crypto exchange Binance… on the same day as the Al-Nassr star promotes the legally embattled platform on X

• Portugal international first launched partnership with Binance in June of 2022 
• Binance’s CEO has stepped down amid breaches of anti-money laundering rules 
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Cristiano Ronaldo has been named in a proposed class-action lawsuit filed by users of crypto exchange platform Binance. 

The Al-Nassr star signed a sponsorship deal with the exchange in June 2022 – after the company had been branded a ‘significant risk’ to consumers by the Financial Conduct Authority – and later developed a line of NFTs (non-fungible tokens) under its aegis. 

Following their release in November of that year, fans pilloried the player’s decision to extend the invitation to fans to ‘join his Web3 community’ with one asking: ‘Could his reputation fall any lower?’

As of November 28, Ronaldo is still involved in an active partnership with the company, but the lawsuit’s plaintiffs levelled the claim at the five-time Ballon d’Or winner that it was his alliance with Binance that had influenced their decision to become involved with the exchange. 

In the lawsuit filed on Tuesday to a United States district court in Florida, Ronaldo is claimed to have ‘promoted, assisted in, and/or actively participated in the offer and sale of unregistered securities in coordination with Binance’. 

The complaint goes on to state that after first becoming involved with the platform to secure the forward’s NFTs, users were more likely invest in the alleged unregistered secuties, and Binance’s crypto yield program.

Yield farming refers to the practice of lending cryptocurrency assests to earn interest on them on a decentralised finance platform, and is largely seen as a high-risk investment strategy. 

Plaintiffs argued that Ronaldo’s popularity – and his reach of 110.3million X (formerly Twitter) followers and a further 613m Instagram followers – helped to grow Binance’s user based, and have alleged that there was a 500 per cent interest in searches for the company in the week after the first sale of Ronaldo’s NFTs. 

The suit also cites that the player should have disclosed any payments received for promoting cryptocurrentcies as mandated by US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) guidelines, and claims that Ronaldo had knowledge of the volatilities of unregistered crypto securities due to his ‘investment experience and vast resources to obtain outside advisors.’

Beyond this class-action suit, Binance is in the throes of a vast legal battle that has already seen their founder Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty to breaching US Anti-Money Laundering laws, and step down from the company. 

The company will pay a $4.3billion (£3.39bn) settlement as part of the plea, and Zhao could face over a year imprisonment as the trial continues. 

In October, as per Reuters, Binance stopped accepting UK customers in compliance with legislation restricting promotion from overseas digital asset firms.  

On Tuesday, Ronaldo appeared to pay no mind to the lawsuit’s filing as he shared a video posted by Binance of himself readying for the camera. 

‘Cooking something up with Binance’, his caption read. 

Ronaldo was spared additional legal trouble in the US last week after a court rejected an appeal from a woman who accused the player of raping her in 2010. 

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Kathryn Mayorga was seeking to overturn a federal judge’s dismissal of the case in June 2022, and to reopen the civil lawsuit filed in 2018, but her request was turned down and dismissed with prejudice. 

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As such, Mayorga will be prevented from refiling the case.