Kraken Parent Seeks Delaware Enforcement of $22m Award Against Ex-Auditor

Payward, the parent company of cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, has petitioned the Delaware Court of Chancery to enter final judgment against Mazars USA, seeking to convert a confidential $22 million arbitration award into an enforceable court order. The move highlights a persistent regulatory headache for digital asset firms: the willingness of established audit houses to walk away from crypto engagements when legal risk emerges.

The award followed arbitration before a retired judge after Mazars abruptly withdrew from Kraken’s 2022 audit in December 2023, days before completion. The accounting firm had previously signed two clean audit opinions for Kraken and stated in writing that it had no disagreement with management, no doubts about the company’s integrity, and had found no evidence of fraud. Mazars tied its exit instead to legal exposure stemming from an SEC enforcement action filed against Kraken in November 2023 — a case the regulator later dropped with prejudice in March 2025, imposing no penalties and requiring no admission of wrongdoing.

Arbitrator found fault on both sides

The arbitrator concluded that Mazars deserved credit for its candour but still owed Kraken damages, while also finding that Kraken’s own accounting infrastructure had not kept pace with its growth. “Kraken was in its early years of operation but was rapidly growing into a major player in the cryptocurrency world. Unfortunately, its accounting procedures and automation were lagging behind,” the arbitrator wrote, according to the arbitration record cited in court filings.

Mazars’ withdrawal was described as triggering a “licensing crisis” for Kraken, complicating its efforts to secure state money transmitter licences — a category of regulatory approval that depends heavily on completed, unqualified audit opinions. Of the $22 million award, $12.5 million was linked specifically to Kraken’s acquisition of TradeStation Crypto, a platform reportedly acquired in part for its existing regulatory licences.

Court filings further show that Mazars received subpoenas from both a federal grand jury and the SEC seeking its Kraken audit files, and that the SEC’s original complaint appeared to quote directly from Kraken’s audit workpapers.

Kraken frames dispute as part of a wider pattern

Kraken has cast the case as more than an isolated contractual dispute, linking it to Mazars Group’s broader retreat from crypto attestation work. That retreat began in December 2022, when the firm pulled proof-of-reserves attestations for exchanges including Binance, Crypto.com and KuCoin from its website in the wake of FTX’s collapse.

Kraken has also pointed to the January 2023 joint statement from the Federal Reserve, the FDIC and the OCC warning banks about crypto-related risk, the now-rescinded SAB 121 accounting guidance, and the failures of Silvergate and Signature Bank, arguing these developments collectively discouraged traditional financial and professional services firms from serving digital asset clients. The company has called on Congress to pass the CLARITY Act, arguing that the United States lags the European Union’s MiCA framework in providing regulatory certainty for the sector.

Forvis Mazars — the firm’s current name following a merger, and now the tenth-largest US accounting firm with roughly $2.2 billion in annual revenue — did not immediately respond to a request for comment reported by Business Insider.

What happens next

The immediate question before the Delaware Court of Chancery is procedural: whether it will convert the confidential arbitration award into a formally enforceable judgment, clearing the way for Payward to collect. For the wider industry, the case is likely to be watched closely as a signal of how courts and regulators handle disputes arising from auditors’ departures from crypto engagements at a time when licensing and banking access remain persistent constraints on the sector’s growth.

Read more: SEC Sets July Timetable for Long-Delayed Crypto Safe Harbour Rule