U.S. officials are now looking into how Iran may have used the crypto exchange Binance to move funds and avoid sanctions. This is according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. The probe adds new heat to Binance, which is the world’s largest crypto trading site.
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The U.S. Justice Department is said to be asking people with direct knowledge of the deals to share details. At this stage, it is unclear whether the probe targets Binance itself or only users who moved funds on the site. Still, the news puts the firm back in the legal spotlight just two years after a major U.S. case against the company.
Probe Focuses on Large Crypto Transfers
The case grew out of an in-house probe at Binance that flagged large crypto flows tied to Iran-linked groups. Staff who ran the probe said they found about $1.7 billion sent from clients in China to crypto wallets tied to Iran.
More than $1 billion of that sum came through a Hong Kong pay firm named Blessed Trust. The funds were said to pass through a web of wallets that may have helped back Iran-aligned groups, which may have included the Houthis in Yemen.
Soon after the team raised those flags, Binance put the staff who ran the probe on leave. The Wall Street Journal said the move came soon after they sent in a report on the funds.
Binance says the firm did not deal with any group on the U.S. sanctions list. A firm spokesman said the firm “categorically did not directly transact with any sanctioned entities.”
He also said the firm found a “sophisticated, multi-jurisdictional pattern of financial activity” and worked with law enforcement to shut the network down.
The firm said its own follow-up probe found that just $24 million went to wallets tied to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Binance Still Under U.S. Oversight
The news lands while Binance is still under strict U.S. watch. In 2023, the firm pleaded guilty to charges related to money laundering and sanctions violations. As part of that case, the firm paid a $4.3 billion fine. Its founder, Changpeng Zhao, also pleaded guilty and spent four months in jail.
Binance must now run under a U.S. compliance monitor until 2029. The monitor has asked the firm to share more data on the Iran-linked deals.
At the same time, U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal has also opened a probe into the matter. He said the size of the flows raised key doubts about the firm’s controls.
“The scale of the newly revealed illicit transfers and the unexplained firing of internal investigators call into question Binance’s compliance with American sanctions and banking laws,” he said.
For now, the Justice Department has not said if Binance broke any law in this case. Yet the probe adds to the view in Washington that crypto trade sites must face the same rules that banks follow when it comes to terror funds and sanctions.
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