Binance Accused of Facilitating Iranian Sanctions Evasion

Iran has reportedly still found ways to funnel money through entities like Binance despite previous sanctions against the company and a jail sentence for its former CEO, Changpeng Zhao. An Iranian named Babak Zanjani, who has called himself an "antisanction operator," made $850 million in transactions on the exchange until as recently as December 2025, according to internal Binance compliance reports seen by The Wall Street Journal. That's on top of another $1.7 billion that the same network may have moved through Binance, as reported earlier by The New York Times and WSJ.

Binance itself flagged the alleged activity, but Zanjani's main account continued to operate for as long as 15 months and was still open in January 2026, the reports showed. Around half of the sum (about $425 million) could have moved through Binance to fund Iran's military, experts told the WSJ. "Binance's own investigators assessed the accounts were a money-laundering network to finance the regime, according to compliance reports," the article states.

Binance told the WSJ in a statement that "it appears the overwhelming majority of these transactions have nothing to do with the Binance platform." A company spokesperson added that Binance didn't allow any transactions with any sanctioned individuals or wallets, and that it took appropriate actions when it uncovered sanctioned accounts. However, the company declined to answer questions about the specific transactions in question. Earlier this year, Binance sued the WSJ for defamation over previous reports on alleged Iran-linked money laundering.

Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal recently opened a probe into potential Binance sanctions violations uncovered by the company's own internal investigators. "Binance appears to have ignored warnings and recommendations to prevent Iranian money laundering schemes on its cryptocurrency exchange," Blumenthal wrote. Iran's crypto exchange Nobitex has also been linked to the BNB Chain blockchain developed by Binance, and another blockchain called Tron created by Justin Sun. Both Sun and Binance are backers of Donald Trump's crypto firm, World Liberty Financial.