{"id":38502,"date":"2025-11-24T16:09:30","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T16:09:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/?p=38502"},"modified":"2025-11-24T16:09:30","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T16:09:30","slug":"binance-founder-changpeng-zhao-accused-of-facilitating-payments-to-hamas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/?p=38502","title":{"rendered":"Binance founder Changpeng Zhao accused of facilitating payments to Hamas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> \n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__content-sign-up-topic-description o3-type-body-base\"><span>Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe class=\"article__content-sign-up-iframe close\" scrolling=\"no\" id=\"signUpIframe\" data-prev-url=\"\/register\/in-article-sign-up?ft-content-uuid=0aea27d8-89a8-4f33-8bfa-2441a16f2b4d\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<div id=\"article-body\">\n<p>The billionaire Binance founder pardoned by Donald Trump has been accused of facilitating millions of dollars\u2019 worth of payments to Hamas in the wake of its attack on Israel on October 7 2023.<\/p>\n<p>In a complaint filed in US federal court on Monday by American citizens whose family were murdered, maimed or taken hostage in the assault, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/stream\/9510321d-6f86-4b1f-8799-9d38490bc061\" title=\"\" data-trackable=\"link\">Changpeng Zhao<\/a> and the cryptocurrency exchange he founded are alleged to have knowingly provided \u201csubstantial assistance\u201d to militant groups including Hamas and Hizbollah, helping them conceal the movement of funds.<\/p>\n<p>The payments allegedly laundered through <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/binance\" title=\"\" data-trackable=\"link\">Binance<\/a> \u2014 the largest crypto exchange in the world \u2014 continued even after the company paid more than $4.3bn in November 2023 to settle US charges of violating anti-money laundering and sanctions laws, lawyers for the victims claim in the lawsuit.<\/p>\n<p>Zhao, known as CZ, was himself sentenced to four months in prison after pleading guilty to a charge of failure to protect against\u00a0money laundering. He was pardoned by Trump in October.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The White House justified the move by saying that Zhao had been \u201cprosecuted by the Biden administration in their war on cryptocurrency\u201d and that US law enforcement agencies had pursued Zhao \u201cdespite no allegations of fraud or identifiable victims\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Binance and Zhao are already facing a separate lawsuit in New York for allegations that they \u201cprovided a funding mechanism for Hamas\u201d in the years before the October 7 2023 attack, which triggered the war in Gaza. Lawyers for the company and Zhao have in that case told the court there was \u201cnothing special about the relationship between Hamas and Binance\u201d and that allegations of funding terrorism were \u201cplainly insufficient\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>After Israeli law enforcement authorities ordered dozens of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/crypto\" title=\"\" data-trackable=\"link\">cryptocurrency<\/a> accounts to be closed in the days after the October 7 attack, Binance confirmed it had \u201cblocked\u201d a \u201csmall number\u201d of accounts and added that it \u201cfollows internationally recognised sanctions rules\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Monday\u2019s complaint contains allegations that go further than those made by US prosecutors and in other civil lawsuits. Lawyers for the October 7 families claim that Binance facilitated transactions to cryptocurrency wallets linked to Gaza-based organisations that the exchange knew, or should have known, were linked to Hamas and other proscribed terrorist groups.<\/p>\n<p>They allege that more than $50mn in transactions to accounts linked to Hamas, Iran\u2019s Revolutionary Guards, Lebanese militant movement Hizbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another faction in Gaza, on public blockchains were facilitated by Binance since October 7 2023.<\/p>\n<p>They further allege that wallets run by Binance itself \u201csent the equivalent of more than $300mn to designated wallets on the blockchain before the\u2009.\u2009.\u2009. attacks and more than $115mn after\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBinance ensured that terrorists and other criminals could deposit and shuffle enormous sums on the exchange with impunity,\u201d lawyers for the plaintiffs allege in the suit, adding that some of the accounts in question remain active. \u201cTo this day, there is no indication that Binance has meaningfully altered its core business model.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In the months leading up to Zhao\u2019s pardon, Binance received a $2bn investment from an Emirati fund that was made using a stablecoin issued by a group part owned by the Trump family.<\/p>\n<p>Zhao and Binance did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the new lawsuit.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/0aea27d8-89a8-4f33-8bfa-2441a16f2b4d\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":38503,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","cs-entry","cs-video-wrap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38502\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}