Update Dec. 23, 07:01 am UTC: This article has been updated to include Binance’s response.
Binance reportedly continued to allow suspicious accounts to move funds in crypto even after the exchange pledged to tighten controls as part of its $4.3 billion US criminal settlement in 2023.
According to internal data reviewed by the Financial Times, a network of 13 user accounts processed about $1.7 billion in transactions from 2021, including roughly $144 million after the November 2023 plea agreement.
The files reportedly include Know-Your-Customer (KYC) documents, IP and device logs, and transaction histories for users in countries including Venezuela, Brazil, Syria, Niger and China.
Regulatory and AML specialists cited by the Financial Times said that the findings raise fresh questions about how effectively Binance has implemented the governance and surveillance upgrades promised US authorities after the settlement.
“We take compliance seriously and reject the framing of the Financial Times report,” a Binance spokesperson told Cointelegraph.
Binance said that all transactions are assessed “based on information available at the time,” and that none of the wallets referenced were sanctioned when the activity referenced occurred. The spokesperson added:
Binance operates under the highest standards of AML, sanction screening, and law enforcement cooperation, and since 2023 Binance has operated under independent monitorship oversight.”
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Suspicious account behaviors
In one case, a Binance account linked to a 25-year-old Venezuelan woman received more than $177 million over two years and changed its linked bank details 647 times in 14 months.
Former prosecutors told the Financial Times that such activity would normally be treated as highly suspicious and potentially consistent with an unregistered money-transmitting business.
Another account, held by a junior bank employee living in a poor district of Caracas, saw about $93 million flow in and out between 2022 and May 2025. Internal logs showed the account was accessed from Caracas one afternoon and from Osaka, Japan, less than 10 hours later, a sequence experts told the FT was physically impossible and the type of anomaly that should automatically trigger review at a regulated institution.
Nick Heather, head of trading at ONE.io, a financial services company providing digital asset trading services, told Cointelegraph that such cases underline the importance of adaptive governance frameworks in digital asset markets.
“When accounts displaying repeated red flags remain active, that points to an escalation and oversight challenge rather than one of market structure. Robust governance, sanctions screening, and post-trade surveillance are of critical importance, and institutional and retail traders operating in regulated markets are already accustomed to these requirements,” Heather said.
All 13 accounts shared markers of suspicious behavior and collectively received about $29 million in stablecoin USDt (USDT) from wallets later frozen by Israel under anti-terrorism laws.
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Plea deal promises and Trump pardon backdrop
Binance in its 2023 plea deal promised to implement real-time monitoring, enhanced due diligence and regular customer reviews to detect suspicious activities.
At the time, US authorities said Binance had failed to report more than 100,000 suspicious transactions involving activities including ransomware, child sexual abuse, narcotics trafficking and transfers linked to groups including al-Qaeda and ISIS.
The Financial Times report comes after US President Donald Trump pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao in October.
