Overview
- The Wall Street Journal reported on May 22 that a covert payments network tied to Iranian financier Babak Zanjani moved roughly $850 million through Binance over about two years, with activity continuing into December 2025.
- Hours after the report, Binance CEO Richard Teng publicly called the article fundamentally inaccurate and said the transactions occurred before the parties were sanctioned and had already been reviewed by the company.
- The U.S. Department of Justice opened a probe in March into possible Iranian sanctions evasion through Binance that focuses on more than $1 billion in flows and builds on work by the exchange's own investigators.
- Sources diverge sharply on scale: Binance's compliance staff reportedly flagged about $1.7 billion in suspicious transactions while the company says its internal review found roughly $24 million directly tied to IRGC-associated wallets.
- Binance remains under a multi-year monitorship after its 2023 guilty plea and $4.3 billion settlement, and the dispute increases political and regulatory pressure that could lead to expanded oversight, further enforcement, or changes to supervision that affect users and the wider crypto industry.