Binance has reportedly fired a group of investigators in its compliance team who discovered evidence that more than $1 billion had been received by two accounts linked to sanctioned Iranian groups, including the Revolutionary Guards Corps, designated as a terrorist organization by the United States.
Internal documents show that the investigators flagged these transactions and reported them to top executives in the fall of 2025, but ultimately got suspended and locked out of company systems within weeks.
Binance Suspends Investigators Who Flagged $1.7 Billion Illicit Transaction
Binance fired at least five employees involved in the investigation, citing issues such as “violations of company protocol” related to the handling of client data. These investigators uncovered evidence that entities tied to Iran had received about $1.7 billion through the exchange from March 2024 through August 2025.
The sequence of events shows that the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume continued to uncover evidence of potential sanctions violations even after it pleaded guilty to anti-money laundering violations in 2023. At the time, Binance pledged to crack down on bad actors who used its platform to launder funds, and said it had hired more than 60 employees with past law enforcement or regulatory experience to address the problem.
However, warnings about the Iranian transactions first surfaced last year, months before U.S. President Donald Trump granted a pardon to Binance’s founder and former CEO, Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao, who had spent four months in federal prison in 2024 after he pleaded guilty to failing to implement an effective program under the Bank Secrecy Act for Binance U.S., allowing illicit activities on the exchange.
Blessed Trust and Hexa Whale Trading Funneled Funds via Binance For the Iranian Regime
The Iranian transactions were routed through the exchange using Tether’s USDT stablecoin on the Tron blockchain – a combination that has become the preferred tool for sanctions evasion.
After analyzing on-chain data, the investigators identified two accounts funneling money to Iran. Blessed Trust, a vendor providing payment services to Binance, moved $1.2 billion over two years through crypto wallets tied to the Revolutionary Guard. Meanwhile, Hexa Whale Trading, a Hong Kong-based crypto trading entity, transferred $490 million via the exchange before Israeli law enforcement contacted Binance about connections to terrorist organizations such as the Houthis, an Iran-backed militia that controls Northern Yemen.
Around the same time, Binance also learned that people in Iran had gained access to more than 1,500 accounts over the past year. The investigators established that a fleet of sanctioned Russian cargo ships was using these accounts to pay crew members.
Blessed Trust, a company incorporated in the British Virgin Islands and the Cayman Islands, also had a business relationship with Binance. It operated as a payments partner for the exchange, with the vendor’s top five customers by revenue identified as Binance-linked entities.
Over the past two years, roughly $1.2 billion in crypto had flowed from Blessed Trust’s Binance account to Iranian groups, according to internal documents. The investigators found that the wallets were controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
According to sources, Binance suspended the original investigators who had reported the transactions through internal reports in November 2025, and then proceeded to fire their replacements within days of taking over the case. At least three of these employees had law enforcement backgrounds in Europe and Asia.
Several of these investigators held leadership roles at the company and oversaw special and global financial investigations, including those related to sanctions evasion and counterterrorism financing. Beyond that, at least four top compliance staff, including a sanctions manager and head of the enterprise compliance team, have either left or have been pushed out over the past three months.
In an official statement, Binance’s chief marketing officer (CMO), Rachel Conlan, said the exchange took the necessary steps to address the issues raised by its investigators, adding that the company did not find any evidence of sanctions violations. She said both accounts linked to the $1.7 billion Iranian transactions were removed, with Binance notifying authorities about the incident.
Conlan noted that the investigators involved in the case were not suspended or terminated for raising compliance concerns, but “certain individuals” were disciplined in relation to “unauthorized disclosure of confidential client information.”
She added that Blessed Trust was one of several vendors for Binance and has no control over its operations. The company stopped using it as a vendor in January 2026.
Binance has notified the IRS and FBI About Sanctions Violations
Over the years, the exchange has served as an attractive venue for crypto money laundering. In 2023, Binance faced legal scrutiny from the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) for allowing people in sanctioned countries to use the platform and conduct business with customers in the United States. At the time, prosecutors found at least 1.1 million transactions worth $900 million involving Iran that violated federal law.
The company agreed to pay a $4.3 billion penalty, while CZ agreed to step down as CEO. Binance also promised to alert U.S. authorities to any lawbreaking detected on its platform. Zhao, who maintains a majority stake in the firm, is worth nearly $80 billion, according to Forbes, and remains one of the industry’s most powerful figures.
Conlan said that Binance has shared information about Blessed Trust with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and plans to submit a report to the Justice Department on Wednesday.
