Cristiano Ronaldo has been named in a class-action complaint filed on behalf of 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 seen him ‘engaged in the mass solicitation of investments in unregistered securities’.
In the complaint filed on Tuesday to the United States District Court, Southern District of Florida in Miami, 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.
The complaint describes Ronaldo as engaging in ‘a sustained and aggressive promotion and advertising campaign for Binance’, with plaintiffs arguing 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 base.
