US federal prosecutors are investigating whether Binance knowingly allowed cryptocurrency trades that breached sanctions on Iran, according to a 22 September Bloomberg report.
The inquiry is being led by the Manhattan US Attorney’s Office, with the Justice Department’s Criminal Division in Washington also involved. Prosecutors are examining the exchange’s compliance controls and whether it knew about the transactions under review. Reuters said it had not independently verified Bloomberg’s report.
Binance said it operated a “zero-tolerance policy for sanctions violations”.
The company added: “We fully cooperate with law enforcement, and we remain committed to rooting out and shutting down bad actors.”
The Justice Department declined to comment to Reuters, while the Manhattan US Attorney’s Office was not immediately available outside normal business hours.
The report does not identify the transactions being examined or say when the investigation began. It follows a separate civil forfeiture case filed in the Southern District of New York on 14 September, involving about $61m in USDT allegedly linked to Iranian oil sales.
Prosecutors are seeking the forfeiture of all USDT held in 10 cryptocurrency addresses in the case, United States v. All USD Tether Held in the Following Cryptocurrency Addresses, No. 1:26-cv-08010.
The complaint alleges the cryptocurrency represented proceeds from black-market Iranian crude oil and petroleum sales, intended to finance Iranian government and military bodies, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
It claims Chinese companies Blessed Trust and Hexa Whale used Binance trading accounts while handling proceeds from Iranian oil transactions. Prosecutors allege a wider network laundered more than $1.5bn in illicit oil proceeds, with the two companies using the US financial system to transfer tens of millions of dollars.
The complaint does not accuse Binance itself of wrongdoing. It concerns USDT held in wallets operating on the TRON network, and states that civil forfeiture allegations remain unproven unless a court rules for the government. Tether would burn the seized tokens and issue replacements of equal value for US government custody.
Binance has said it removed both companies after reviews. It told senators that law-enforcement officials contacted it in April 2025 about transactions potentially linked to terrorism financing. The exchange supplied records involving Hexa Whale in June 2025, removed the company on 13 August and offboarded Blessed Trust in January 2026 after a source-of-funds review.
The company says no Binance account, to its knowledge, dealt directly with an Iran-based entity. It said an internal review found about $126.1m eventually reached Iran-linked wallets through multiple blockchain transfers, including up to $24.1m sent to IRGC-related wallets.
Binance also disputes reports that compliance staff were dismissed for raising concerns. It says one employee was fired after an investigation into an unauthorised disclosure of user information, while others left voluntarily.
The scrutiny follows Binance’s November 2023 guilty plea to offences involving the Bank Secrecy Act, an unregistered money-transmitting business and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. It agreed to pay $4.316bn and retain an independent compliance monitor for three years.
Prosecutors said Binance had allowed more than $898m in trades between US users and users ordinarily resident in Iran from January 2018 to May 2022.
