U.S. prosecutors are seeking an above-guidance sentence of 36 months for the former CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Binance on charges of enabling money laundering, according to a sentencing memorandum out late Tuesday.

The memorandum, which was filed with the court for the western district of Washington, states that Zhao should serve a higher sentence that suggested under advisory guidelines to “reflect the gravity of his crimes.”

Under advisory guidelines, Zhao’s sentencing would come in at a range of 12 to 18 months in prison.

“A custodial sentence of 36 months—twice the high end of the Guidelines range—would reflect the seriousness of the offense, promote respect for law, afford adequate deterrence, and be sufficient but not greater than necessary to achieve the goals of sentencing,” U.S. prosecutors said.

Zhao is accused of wilfully failing to implement an effective anti-money laundering program as required by the Bank Secrecy Act, and of effectively allowing Binance to process transactions involving proceeds of unlawful activity, including transactions between Americans and individuals in sanctions jurisdictions.

Binance has separately been sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission over the alleged mishandling of customer assets and the operation of an illegal, unregistered exchange in the U.S.

The U.S., which separately accuses Binance and Zhao of violating the U.S. Bank Secrecy Act and sanctions on Iran, ordered Binance to pay $4.3 billion in fines and forfeiture. Zhao agreed to pay a $50 million fine.

Zhao stepped down as Binance’s CEO in November last year after reaching this plea and was replaced by the former Abu Dhabi markets regulator’s chief, Richard Teng.

Zhao was not immediately available for comment when contacted via social media platform X. Binance has yet to return a request for comment when contacted by CNBC.

Amazon is opening cloud regions in Southeast Asia because customers want their data stored securely in their own countries, Amazon Chief Technology Officer Werner Vogels said in an exclusive interview.

“The reason for this is that many of our customers have been asking for that. They really wanted something local such that they can meet, for example, local data storage requirements, or protection of personal identifiable information,” Vogels told CNBC’s JP Ong.

Amazon’s cloud computing division, Amazon Web Services, was the world’s largest cloud service provider in the fourth quarter, accounting for 31% of total cloud spending, according to a Feb. 26 report from Canalys.

An AWS region is a physical location where data centers are clustered. Within each AWS region are a minimum of three separate availability zones. Each zone has its own power, cooling and physical security and is connected through redundant, ultra-low-latency networks.

“And it’s not just startups that are looking for that. Big enterprises and government agencies as well. You can imagine government agencies want to go through a digital transformation as well,” Vogels said.

“And for them, it’s important to have these kinds of technologies on the ground, in [the] country to make sure that they can serve their customers best or their citizens best,” said Vogels.

Amazon in November said it is launching a new AWS Region in Malaysia this year. It previously committed a 25.5 billion Malaysian ringgit ($6 billion) investment by 2037 to support the government’s ambitions to transform Malaysia into a “high-income” digital economy by 2030.

“This new AWS Region will also enable customers with data residency preferences to store data securely in Malaysia, help customers to achieve even lower latency, and serve demand for cloud services across Southeast Asia,” the statement said.

This comes after AWS opened a cloud region in Indonesia in December 2021 and in Singapore in 2010. AWS is also planning to launch an infrastructure region in Thailand.

AWS already operates multiple regions across North America, South America, Europe, China, Asia Pacific, South Africa and the Middle East.

“And especially, of course, the security capabilities that AWS has, that allows us to protect these customers. Security, will be, and is forever, our number one priority. [It] is our number one investment area,” said Vogels.

“And to be able to keep customers safe in our compute regions, [it] is of great attraction to companies here in the region and also governments.”

Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison said Tuesday that the company is moving its world headquarters to Nashville, Tennessee, to be closer to a major health-care epicenter.

In a wide-ranging conversation with Bill Frist, a former U.S. Senate Majority Leader, Ellison said Oracle is moving a “huge campus” to Nashville, “which will ultimately be our world headquarters.” He said Nashville is an established health center and a “fabulous place to live,” one that Oracle employees are excited about.

“It’s the center of the industry we’re most concerned about, which is the health-care industry,” Ellison said.

The announcement was seemingly spur-of-the-moment. “I shouldn’t have said that,” Ellison told Frist, a longtime health-care industry veteran who represented Tennessee in the Senate. The pair spoke during a fireside chat at the Oracle Health Summit in Nashville.

Shares of Oracle were mostly flat in extended trading Tuesday.

Oracle moved its headquarters from Silicon Valley to Austin, Texas, in 2020. The company has been making a major push into health care in recent years, most notably with its $28 billion acquisition of the medical records software giant Cerner. Ellison said Tuesday that Oracle is relatively new to the health-care sector, but he believes the company has a “moral obligation” to solve problems facing the industry.

Nashville has been a major player in the health-care scene for decades, and the city is now home to a vibrant network of health systems, startups and investment firms. The city’s reputation as a health-care hub was catalyzed when HCA Healthcare, one of the first for-profit hospital companies in the U.S., was founded there in 1968.

HCA helped attract troves of health-care professionals to Nashville, and other organizations quickly followed suit. Oracle has been developing its new $1.2 billion campus in the city for about three years, according to The Tennessean. 

“Our people love it here, and we think it’s the center of our future,” Ellison said.

Oracle did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.