Binance
allowed hundreds of millions of dollars to move through suspicious accounts
even after promising to strengthen compliance as part of a $4.3 billion US
criminal settlement in 2023, according to an exclusive Financial Times (FT) investigation.
Binance Let Suspicious
Accounts Trade After $4.3B US Settlement
Internal
files reviewed by the FT reveal accounts with red flags – including connections
to terror financing networks, impossible login patterns, and failed identity
checks – kept trading well after the November
2023 plea agreement. The leaked data covers transactions from 2021 through
this year.
One account
belonged to a resident of a Venezuelan slum who moved $93 million through Binance between 2021
and 2025. Part of those funds came from a network later accused by US
authorities of secretly moving money for Iran and Lebanon’s Hizbollah.
Binance allowed suspicious accounts to operate even after 2023 US plea agreement https://t.co/5EEWGrwMCg
— Financial Times (@FT) December 22, 2025
The FT
obtained data for 13 suspicious accounts that handled $1.7 billion in
transactions, with $144 million occurring after the settlement. One account
registered to a 25-year-old Venezuelan woman received over $177 million in
crypto over two years and changed payment bank details 647 times in 14 months,
cycling through 496 unique accounts across the Americas.
“That
qualifies as suspicious,” Stefan Cassella, a former federal prosecutor,
commented for FT. “It looks like someone is acting as a money-transmitting
business.”
The FT
dropped the bombshell months after the SEC abandoned its lawsuit against
Binance, which accused the exchange of artificially
inflating trading volumes. Other allegations included the diversion of
customer funds and misleading investors about the exchange’s surveillance
controls.
Concerns
over Binance’s operations were also raised this year by
France, which launched a criminal investigation in early 2025.
Physically Impossible
Activity Went Undetected
The account
tied to the Venezuelan bank employee showed access from Caracas at 3:56 p.m. on
February 24, 2025, then from Osaka, Japan, at 1:30 a.m. the next day, a
physically impossible sequence.
All 13
accounts received funds totaling $29 million in Tether stablecoin from accounts
later frozen by Israel under anti-terrorism law. Nearly all came from four
crypto wallets linked to Tawfiq Al-Law, a Syrian accused of moving money for
Hizbollah and Iran-backed Houthis. Israel seized the accounts in May 2023, and
the US Treasury sanctioned Al-Law in March 2024.
Binance
told the FT it “maintains strict compliance controls and a zero-tolerance
approach to illicit activity” with “robust systems in place to flag
and investigate suspicious transactions.”
Trump Pardon Complicates
Oversight
President
Donald Trump pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao in
October for violating US anti-money laundering laws. The Trump family
subsequently expanded business ties with the exchange this month through World
Liberty Financial, announcing a “massive expansion” of its USD1
stablecoin on Binance.
The Justice
Department and Treasury appointed two independent monitors in
May 2024 to oversee Binance’s compliance. Many transactions the FT reviewed
occurred after monitoring began.
Jessica
Davis, a former Canadian intelligence official, said Trump’s pardon loosened
the compliance environment. “Previously, the incentive was: keep your CEO
out of jail,” she commented to FT.
“Yes,
there are fines, but part of the problem is that we’re just talking about so
much money being made on these platforms that even a billion-dollar fine
becomes fairly meaningless.”
This article was written by Damian Chmiel at www.financemagnates.com.
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