Trump Pardons Binance Founder Changpeng Zhao
▼ Summary
– Changpeng Zhao, founder of Binance, was pardoned by President Trump after being sentenced to four months in prison for anti-money laundering failures.
– Binance faced a $4.3 billion fine under the Biden administration for facilitating billions in unregulated transactions, including nearly $900 million between the US and Iran.
– The Trump administration has shown sympathy toward Binance, with the SEC dropping its lawsuit in May and the pardon potentially allowing Zhao to return to business in the US.
– The pardon ends the DOJ’s monitoring of Binance, though a separate Treasury program remains in place for now.
– This is part of a series of tech industry pardons by Trump, including Ross Ulbricht, Trevor Milton, and BitMEX co-founders.
President Donald Trump has issued a full pardon to Changpeng Zhao, the founder of the global cryptocurrency exchange Binance. This significant decision, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, follows extensive advocacy from the company and Zhao’s personal support for a Trump-affiliated crypto initiative known as World Liberty Financial.
Earlier this year, Zhao received a four-month prison sentence after admitting guilt to charges that Binance failed to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program. As part of a broader settlement with the Department of Justice during the Biden administration, the company was also compelled to pay a colossal $4.3 billion fine. Federal prosecutors had asserted that the platform evolved into a central node for illicit finance, processing billions in unregulated transactions. This included close to $900 million in transfers between users in the United States and Iran, activities that violated strict economic sanctions.
The current administration has demonstrated a notably different posture toward the cryptocurrency sector and Binance’s specific situation. In a prior development this spring, the Securities and Exchange Commission dropped its own litigation against the company. With the presidential pardon now granted, Zhao and Binance face a dramatically altered landscape, potentially clearing a path for their renewed operations within the United States. The pardon effectively terminates the Justice Department’s oversight of the company, although a separate monitoring arrangement with the Treasury Department remains active for the time being.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt provided a statement to the Journal, confirming that President Trump utilized his constitutional power to pardon Mr. Zhao. She characterized the prior legal action as part of the “Biden Administration’s war on cryptocurrency” and declared that conflict to be concluded.
Zhao joins a growing list of technology and finance figures who have received clemency from President Trump. This list includes Ross Ulbricht, the creator of the Silk Road dark web marketplace, who was pardoned in January. Subsequent pardons were granted in March to Trevor Milton, the former CEO of Nikola, and the three co-founders of the crypto derivatives platform BitMEX: Arthur Hayes, Benjamin Delo, and Samuel Reed.
(Source: The Verge)
