The Wall Street Journal reported that Iranian financier Babak Zanjani allegedly used Binance as part of a payment network tied to Iranian regime-linked financing activity that made roughly $850 million in transactions over two years, largely through a single trading account that remained open as recently as January.
The network was run by Zanjani, an Iranian national who describes himself as an "antisanction" operator, according to the report, citing internal Binance compliance findings.
Zanjani's allies — including a sister, a romantic partner, and a director of his company — ran additional accounts accessed from the same devices, a pattern Binance's own investigators flagged, according to the WSJ. The main account continued to operate for at least 15 months, the report said.
Binance CEO Richard Teng pushed back on X, calling the WSJ's reporting "fundamentally inaccurate."
Teng said the transactions referenced by the WSJ occurred before the individuals involved were sanctioned, that Binance had proactively investigated the activity before the WSJ made contact, and that the exchange had provided those facts to the newspaper before publication.
