Caught up in another $850 million Iranian fund flow controversy! WSJ adds more revelations, Binance CEO refutes "inaccurate reporting"

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The war between the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance and The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has escalated once again. Following the defamation lawsuit earlier this year, the latest WSJ report further alleges that Binance has become a financing channel for Iran to evade sanctions, handling as much as $850 million within two years. In response, Binance CEO Richard Teng quickly stepped forward to counter, sharply criticizing the report's content as "fabricated," with both sides holding their respective positions. The Wall Street Journal, citing the results of Binance's internal compliance investigation, pointed out that Iranian financier Babak Zanjani, who styles himself as an "anti-sanctions expert," is suspected of using Binance to construct a financial network, providing underground capital channels for the Iranian regime, with the amount handled over the past 2 years estimated at $850 million, and the vast majority of the capital flow concentrated in the same trading account, which remained actively operating until January of this year. The report further revealed that this funding network was led by Babak Zanjani, whose biological sister, partner, and company directors also used the same devices to log into multiple other accounts to transfer funds. In fact, this pattern of "multiple accounts sharing devices" has already been regarded as highly abnormal and flagged as a risk by Binance's investigation team, but the report indicates that the account continued to operate for at least 15 months afterward. Faced with outside questioning, Binance CEO Richard Teng posted a rebuttal on the social platform X. He stated that the transactions mentioned by The Wall Street Journal occurred when the relevant parties had not yet been placed on sanctions lists, and that Binance had already proactively launched an internal investigation before the media made contact, providing objective facts to The Wall Street Journal. Not only that, a Binance spokesperson also reiterated that the exchange "absolutely does not tolerate any transactions with sanctioned entities." The spokesperson further criticized the report for deliberately conflating the broad capital flows across the entire blockchain network with the actual capital flows within the Binance platform (such as deposits, withdrawals, trading volume, and account turnover rates), thereby "severely exaggerating" Binance's role in this incident. Richard Teng emphasized: "Binance has absolutely zero tolerance for any illegal activity." In fact, this is not the first time the two sides have clashed. In February of this year, The Wall Street Journal had already reported on similar Iranian capital flow issues, claiming that Binance had dismissed internal compliance investigators. Binance was extremely dissatisfied with this, believing the accusations were purely fabricated, and formally filed a defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal in March, with the case still under review. However, the U.S. regulatory pressure facing Binance has indeed never let up. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is currently still investigating whether Iran has used Binance to evade U.S. economic sanctions. Just in May of this year, the U.S. Department of the Treasury privately demanded that Binance must strictly comply with the independent compliance monitoring program in the 2023 plea agreement; reportedly, this move by the Treasury was influenced by a new wave of intelligence, which alleged that between 2024 and 2025, more than $1 billion in funds may still have flowed through Binance to entities related to the Iranian regime.

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