Binance disputes latest WSJ report on alleged Iran-linked transactions

The Wall Street Journal reported that Iranian financier Babak Zanjani allegedly used Binance as part of a payment network tied to Iranian regime-linked financing activity that made roughly $850 million in transactions over two years, largely through a single trading account that remained open as recently as January.

The network was run by Zanjani, an Iranian national who describes himself as an "antisanction" operator, according to the report, citing internal Binance compliance findings.

Zanjani's allies — including a sister, a romantic partner, and a director of his company — ran additional accounts accessed from the same devices, a pattern Binance's own investigators flagged, according to the WSJ. The main account continued to operate for at least 15 months, the report said.

Binance CEO Richard Teng pushed back on X, calling the WSJ's reporting "fundamentally inaccurate."

Teng said the transactions referenced by the WSJ occurred before the individuals involved were sanctioned, that Binance had proactively investigated the activity before the WSJ made contact, and that the exchange had provided those facts to the newspaper before publication.

A Binance spokesperson separately told The Block that the exchange "did not permit any transactions with sanctioned individuals" and argued the WSJ "materially overstates Binance's role" by conflating broader blockchain activity with direct Binance platform flows, including deposits, withdrawals, trading activity, account turnover, and wider network-level volumes.

"Binance has zero tolerance for illicit activity," Teng wrote.

The report lands as Binance's defamation lawsuit against the WSJ over its February reporting on the same subject remains active. That suit, filed in March, alleged the WSJ's claims about Iran-linked flows and the firing of internal compliance investigators were false.

The DOJ has also been investigating whether Iran used Binance to evade U.S. sanctions. In May, the U.S. Treasury privately demanded that Binance adhere to the independent compliance monitoring program from its 2023 guilty plea, citing fresh reports of over $1 billion allegedly passing through the exchange to Iran-linked entities in 2024 and 2025.