(Editor’s note: The headline has been updated and a statement from Binance has been added to this story.)
The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, is reportedly at the heart of a secret payment network established by Iranian billionaire financier Babak Zanjani to fund Iran’s military forces. The company has rejected the claims.
Until December, Zanjani, an “antisanction” operator, allegedly facilitated transactions worth $850 million over two years through a single trading account on Binance as Tehran prepared for potential conflict with the U.S. Experts in terrorism-financing, foreign law-enforcement officials, and individuals privy to the activity suggest that roughly half of these transactions likely financed Iran’s military, reported the Wall Street Journal on Thursday.
Binance’s internal investigators concluded that the accounts were part of a money-laundering network designed to fund the Iranian regime, as per the report.
WSJ also reported that Iran’s central bank allegedly transferred $107 million in cryptocurrency into Binance accounts last year, while foreign investigators tracked roughly $260 million in transactions during 2024 and 2025 between Binance-linked accounts and wallets tied to sanctioned Iranian entities and suspected terrorist financiers.
Binance rejected the WSJ’s methodology for the report as “damagingly flawed” and stated that it did not permit any transactions with sanctioned individuals and took all appropriate investigative measures. “Binance has zero-tolerance for illicit activity on its platform.” a spokesperson for the company said in an emailed statement on Friday.
“We work closely with law enforcement authorities around the world to detect, prevent, and combat financial crime.”
Iran Crypto Flows Draw Scrutiny
The above-mentioned funds come in addition to the roughly $1.7 billion that Binance investigators previously determined had flowed through the exchange to the same Iranian network, according to a February WSJ report.
Binance had denied those allegations, calling them “demonstrably false” and “defamatory”. However, the exchange had previously pleaded guilty to failing to register as a money transmitting business and breaching sanctions, agreeing to pay over $4 billion in penalties and retain an independent compliance monitor for three years.
In April, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) sought answers about Binance’s alleged $1.7 billion in Iran-linked flows.
By May, cryptocurrency worth at least $22.6 million had reportedly moved through Nobitex on BNB Chain (CRYPTO: BNB), and at least $550,000 had moved via Tron (CRYPTO: TRX), since the Iran war started in late February. Nobitex, widely used by sanctioned Iranian institutions and ordinary citizens, processed over $2 billion on the Tron network and approximately $317 million on the BNB Chain from January 2023 onward.
Justin Sun, creator of TRON, was once closely tied to Trump-backed World Liberty Financial, though the relationship has since deteriorated into legal disputes. Meanwhile, Binance used World Liberty Financial’s USD1 stablecoin in a $2 billion MGX deal, and co-founder Changpeng Zhao was later pardoned by President Donald Trump.
Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.
Image via Shutterstock
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