Binance CEO rejects Iran-linked flow allegations

The exchange’s chief executive, Richard Teng, wrote that “no sanctions violations were found,” that “no investigators were fired for raising concerns,” and that the company had asked for corrections to what he described as inaccurate reporting. The denial followed a report that alleged roughly $1 billion in Iran-linked USDT transactions on Tron moved through the exchange between March 2024 and August 2025, and that internal investigators were dismissed after escalating concerns.

In a detailed compliance post, Binance argued that risk cannot be reduced to zero because public blockchains allow users to send assets to exchange deposit addresses without prior approval, and exchanges often identify and mitigate exposure only after funds arrive. The company said that when credible risk information emerges, its process is to investigate, mitigate, offboard accounts and report to relevant authorities.

Binance also said it had “significantly reduced” sanctions-related exposure over time, citing internal analysis based on independent industry data showing sanctions-related flows fell to 0.009% of total exchange volume in July 2025 from 0.284% in January 2024. For Iran-linked exchange exposure specifically, Binance said direct exposure to four major Iranian exchanges dropped from $4.19 million in January 2024 to $110,000 by January 2026, a decline of more than 97%.

On staffing, Binance’s compliance post said claims that it terminated compliance or investigation staff for working on sanctions-related cases were false, and that some employees departed after an internal review found breaches of data-protection and confidentiality guidelines. Teng’s Feb. 16 statement echoed that position, rejecting the allegation that dismissals were retaliation for raising concerns.

The company cast its current posture as the result of a multi-year buildout of controls, budgets and governance. Binance said it has invested “hundreds of millions” of dollars in compliance infrastructure and, as of early 2026, had 593 full-time employees in the compliance business unit plus hundreds more in compliance-adjacent roles across customer service, technology and product teams – more than 1,500 people overall, or roughly a quarter of global headcount. It also said compliance investigations are handled independently, with decisions based on law and established procedures rather than commercial considerations.

Binance positioned its enforcement cooperation as a core part of that framework, saying its teams supported authorities in confiscating more than $131 million in funds linked to illicit activity in 2025 and processed more than 71,000 law-enforcement requests worldwide, alongside training sessions for investigators. The exchange also pointed to licensing and registrations across jurisdictions, and described a cycle of external reviews, audits and regulatory inspections over the past 18 months intended to tighten customer verification, monitoring procedures and governance.

The dispute arrives as Binance remains under heightened regulatory scrutiny in multiple markets. A court-appointed compliance monitor was part of the exchange’s 2023 settlement with U.S. authorities, and the company has been navigating ongoing oversight while seeking to expand and maintain approvals across regions. That backdrop matters because sanctions controls are not only a screening problem at onboarding; they are also a transaction-monitoring problem, with attention increasingly focused on stablecoin rails and high-throughput networks where large flows can move quickly across multiple hops.

In its compliance post, Binance said it cannot discuss specific users or disclose details that could compromise ongoing inquiries, but described how it approaches “indirect exposure” cases – situations where flows reach an exchange after passing through intermediary wallets. The company said an investigation in one case showed a “multi-hop” route through at least three wallet addresses between Binance and sanctioned entities, and that it offboarded accounts and shared information with appropriate stakeholders as the review progressed.

For markets, the debate underscores a structural tension in crypto compliance: public ledgers make transfers transparent, but they also make inbound deposits permissionless. Exchanges argue that effective control depends on post-receipt screening, clustering, typology detection and escalation workflows, while critics focus on whether suspicious activity is detected quickly enough and whether risk decisions are insulated from revenue pressures.

Teng’s statement did not concede any breach and framed Binance’s posture as consistent with its regulatory commitments. Binance’s longer compliance note took a similar line, saying the “facts” show its compliance program worked and that claims to the contrary are wrong.