Binance CEO Hints at Legal Action over Report on Iranian Sanctions
Binance CEO Richard Teng took to social media on Tuesday to attack what he called “inaccurate reporting” by the Wall Street Journal regarding investigators at the crypto exchange uncovering $1.7 billion in digital assets moving to Iranian entities.
In a Tuesday X post, Teng said the report, published on Monday, contained “defamatory claims,” including a letter from Binance’s legal team “demanding immediate corrections and a full retraction of these false statements.”
“Your Article is false, seriously misleading to your readers, and defamatory of our client,” said the letter to WSJ editor-in-chief Emma Tucker from lawyers at Withers Bergman. “Our client has written to you directly seeking correction of the major matters of significant concern and we call upon you to act responsibly, and to remove your Article pending this correction, thus potentially avoiding the need for any further action.”
The article, by reporters Patricia Kowsmann, Angus Berwick, and Ben Foldy, claimed that Binance executives fired internal investigators who reported the exchange facilitated $1 billion in crypto to a “network funding Iran-backed terror groups.”
A New York Times article published the same day made similar claims, reporting that the investigators, four of whom were fired or suspended, had found “$1.7 billion had flowed from two Binance accounts to Iranian entities with links to terrorist groups, a possible violation of global sanctions.”
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According to Binance’s legal team, the WSJ reporters failed to reflect the crypto exchange’s responses to questions for the article, claiming that the publication had an “agenda already set.” Teng referred followers to a Sunday blog post on the exchange’s compliance program.
Fortune published a similar report on Feb. 13 making claims about violations of Iranian sanctions and Binance firing five employees involved in the investigation. The crypto exchange and Teng also pushed back against the report, calling the claims “categorically false.”
Former CEO gets closer to Trump-backed company after pardon
Last week, former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, who preceded Teng, spoke at a crypto forum organized by World Liberty Financial, a company backed by US President Donald Trump and his sons. Reports from the event said Zhao announced that Binance.US, the separate US entity of the crypto exchange, aimed to “do much more business in the US.”
Zhao served four months in prison following a 2023 agreement with US authorities, in which he stepped down as CEO and agreed to plead guilty to one count related to Binance not implementing an effective Anti-Money Laundering program. The exchange paid $4.3 billion as part of the deal, and Trump later issued a presidential pardon for Zhao.
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