According to an investigation published by the Financial Times, Binance made a $4.3 billion criminal plea deal in 2023, followed by the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars in cryptocurrencies to suspicious accounts.
These accounts (some linked to terrorist networks, others displaying impossible login behavior or blatant KYC failures) remain active, with one Venezuelan in particular having transferred $93 million through his Binance account, some of which has been traced back to Iran and Hezbollah.
Binance accounts came from Venezuela, Brazil, Syria, Niger and China, with users allegedly logging in from Caracas or Osaka within hours or changing bank account details 647 times in just 14 months.
“A common automated process at financial institutions is to check for irregular ‘pass-through’ activity, such as when funds deposited into an account are transferred again within 24 hours in a potentially suspicious manner,” the FT said.
It turns out that there was suspicious activity on the Binance account.
The Financial Times claims to have investigated 13 different Binance accounts and discovered $1.7 billion in suspicious cryptocurrency flows, including $144 million from November 2023 on the same day Binance agreed to clean up.
A Venezuelan woman who joined Binance in 2022 allegedly received over $177 million in cryptocurrencies in less than two years and funneled the funds across the Americas using 496 different bank accounts.
The 13 accounts received at least $29 million in Tether from wallets that were later frozen by Israel under anti-terrorism laws. Most of the money came from four wallets linked to Tawfiq al-Rouh, who is accused of funneling money to Syrian companies linked to Hezbollah, the Houthis and the Assad regime. These wallets were seized in May 2023 and sanctioned by the US Treasury in March 2024.
In one bizarre case, a man from Brazil registered with a damaged 20-year-old ID card that couldn’t even read his date of birth. The email in the file was from a completely different woman. He was later charged with aiding a group in smuggling illegal gold. When he was stopped at the Venezuelan border with $50,000 in cash, he told a security guard it was to buy sausages from a Chinese acquaintance.
His Binance account shows he received $16 million, with at least $5 million tied to his Al-Law wallet. According to Binance documents, the man had a net worth of $400,000, but withdrew $4 million in hard currency before shutting down at the end of 2022. However, the account remained open until 2025.
“Any suggestion that our client knowingly facilitated the criminal conduct of bad actors is unfounded,” said Carter Luck, director of Binance’s legal team. They also claimed that none of the wallets were marked as terrorist financing targets at the time, and that no warnings were triggered by major blockchain tracking tools.
Former CEO Zhao Changpeng, better known as CZ, was charged with “intentionally violating anti-money laundering laws” and pardoned by President Trump in October.
The White House defended the pardon, saying President Trump was correcting the Biden administration’s excesses in the “cryptocurrency war.”
CZ is still barred from executive roles at Binance, but his longtime business partner He Yi, with whom he has three children, was just named co-CEO this month.
The Treasury Department previously accused Binance of failing to report more than 100,000 suspicious transactions related to crimes such as child exploitation, ransomware, drug trafficking, and terrorism.
And now, in November, 306 family members of victims of the October 7, 2023 attack filed a lawsuit accusing Binance of enabling Hamas and Hezbollah to launder millions of dollars through its platform.
Binance continues to deny any wrongdoing, calling these claims “grotesque and sensational.”
