Binance Rejects Claims of Penalty Avoidance, Reports 97% Drop

The analysis shows that discipline-linked wallets have accumulated large stablecoin balances, underscoring the industry-wide compliance challenges.

Binance has reported a decrease in its exposure to sanctioned entities, indicating a 97% decrease since January 2024.

The announcement follows allegations of sanctions violations and allegations that investigators were fired for raising law enforcement concerns.

Binance Outpaces Global Peers

Recent reports from Fortune say that several investigators have been terminated after flagging more than $1 billion in transactions linked to Iranian partners, mainly involving Tether’s USDT on the Tron blockchain over the course of 18 months.

In addition to the withdrawal of the investigators, the report revealed that in the past three months, at least four high-level employees have been relieved or fired.

Separately, blockchain analytics platform Elliptic noted in January that wallets tied to the Central Bank of Iran had accumulated more than $500 million in USDT, indicating a growing reliance on stablecoins to bypass banking restrictions.

In response, Binance explained its compliance measures in a blog post, describing its program as “best-in-class” and strengthening it further. Data shared by the exchange shows that discipline-related exposure as a percentage of total exchange decreased from 0.284% in January 2024 to 0.009% in July 2025, representing a decrease of 96.8%.

Direct communication with the four major Iranian cryptocurrency exchanges also decreased by 97.3% during this period, from $4.19 million to approximately $0.11 million, surpassing the ten largest global exchange peers in reducing risk. In 2025 alone, the company claims to have processed more than 71,000 requests from authorities and supported more than $131 million in asset acquisitions.

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These developments come as Binance continues to operate under the compliance changes agreed upon during its settlement with US authorities, after the exchange of anti-money laundering and disciplinary charges, paying $4.3 billion in penalties.

Binance denies the allegations

According to Binance, recent reporting on its sanctions compliance status is based on incomplete and inaccurate information that does not reflect the full record.

The company shared that the two entities mentioned in the reports underwent a systematic internal review, which confirmed that they were not on any sanctions list while using the platform and that their transactions did not trigger alerts from industry-standard monitoring tools.

Binance added that as soon as new information became available, it continued to activate its compliance agreements and took appropriate measures.

The group also denied allegations that it fired investigative staff for working on the cases, clarifying that some relevant staff left after an internal review found violations of the company’s data protection and privacy guidelines.

The former CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, also dismissed these allegations on social media, saying,

“You can put a negative narrative on anything by talking to an ‘anonymous source’ who is ‘unhappy’ or paid for FUD.”