Binance delists five Russian lenders on site following scrutiny: WSJ

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, has stopped offering clients a way to pay one another through sanctioned Russian banks, according to the Wall Street Journal. 

Binance’s peer-to-peer service no longer lists five sanctioned Russian lenders on its site as a way for users to transfer rubles to each other, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. 

The Journal quoted a Binance spokesperson who said that the exchange “regularly update[s] our systems to ensure compliance.” 

A Binance spokesperson also said in a statement sent to The Block that the exchange "aims to diligently comply with the global sanctions rules and enforces sanctions on people, organizations, entities, and countries that have been blacklisted by the international community, denying such actors access to the Binance platform." 

Earlier this week, the Journal reported that Binance was helping people in Russia trade rubles for digital tokens involving sanctioned banks. The report came as the Justice Department has been investigating since at least May whether Binance was used to let Russians evade U.S. sanctions, according to Bloomberg.  

Trouble at home

Other regulators have increased their scrutiny of the crypto industry and have specifically called out Binance in recent lawsuits. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission sued Binance and its CEO Changpeng "CZ" Zhao in March for allegedly violating federal laws and for not registering the exchange in the U.S.

A few months later, the Securities and Exchange Commission sued Binance and said that the exchange and affiliated companies repeatedly lied to customers and misdirected funds. 

Updated at 3:45 p.m. ET to add Binance comments sent to The Block