Binance Still Processing $144 Million in Suspicious Crypto Payments After Plea Agreement: Report
Crypto exchange Binance continued to process payments with relaxed anti-money laundering standards after reaching a plea agreement with paying a record fine of more than $4 billion related to those insufficient policies in 2023, according to the youth Financial Times a report issued early Monday. A new investigation revealed hundreds of millions of dollars in transfers made through 13 specific Binance accounts, some of which had links to terrorist groups.
I Financial Times The report shows that practices intended to end as part of a crypto exchange application, such as barring individuals from personally identifiable information stored on file in operating accounts, continue. The report includes details of multiple accounts where transactions worth hundreds of millions of dollars were made by unknown sources and suspicious activity regarding the availability of payments and locations. Suspicious accounts are said to have made $1.7 billion in payments, with $144 million of that coming after Binance’s request.
Examples of information related to these accounts include a Brazilian man whose identification on file was more than twenty years old and had an illegible date of birth, in addition to an account tied to a Venezuelan woman who changed the bank information on her account 647 times in a fourteen-month period. An account linked to a Brazilian man had received more than $10 million, including crypto addresses linked to the terrorist organization Al-Law, while an account tied to a Venezuelan woman had more than $100 billion in circulation.
The report cites several anti-money laundering attorneys who looked at the data and pointed out that there are a number of red flags that would be obvious to compliance teams at any typical bank or financial institution. In response to a request for comment from Financial TimesBinance called the allegations “incredibly sensational.”
This new report follows a similar report by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists last month that also showed that Binance and other international crypto exchanges continued to operate with insufficient anti-money laundering standards.
Notably, former Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao recently you are forgiven by President Trump for his role in loosening anti-money laundering standards during his time in crypto trading. Forgiveness faced it strong accusations of unprecedented corruptionas Binance has at least one major venture against the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial which includes the $2 billion crypto entity’s USD1 stablecoin. Recently, the business relationship between World Liberty Financial and Binance has been strengthened, with further integration between Binance and the USD1 stablecoin, in accordance with CoinDesk.
President Trump has also received criticism his many other crypto projectslike memecoin and a branded hotel developmentwhich he was involved in when his administration rolled back the strong crypto regulatory environment under Biden.
While CZ received amnesty from Trump, privacy-focused Bitcoin wallet developers weren’t so lucky. Samurai Wallet founder Keonne Rodriguez recently reported the start of a five-year prison sentence the charges are also related to money launderingdespite never holding user fees for their software.
Of course, the developers of Samurai Wallet have no business dealings with the Trump family, which critics point out. why did the developers’ plea for amnesty fall on deaf earsat least until now. At last week’s event, Trump said you will look for possible forgiveness from the developers of Samurai Wallet.
In his first few days in office, Trump too you are forgiven Ross Ulbricht, who was serving a life sentence as operator of the darknet marketplace Silk Road.
