Binance Allowed High-Risk Accounts to Move Millions Despite Promise To Tighten Control

Financial Times has alleged that Binance had continued to allow suspicious crypto transactions to flow through its platform even after agreeing to tighten controls under its landmark $4.3 billion US criminal settlement.

The media company published a report on this incident after finding incriminating evidence, raising fresh questions about how rigorously the world’s largest crypto exchange has enforced its promised compliance reforms in the wake of one of the most consequential enforcement actions in crypto history.

Internal records reviewed by the Financial Times reportedly showed that 13 suspicious accounts on Binance hadw processed a whopping $1.7 billion in crypto transactions from 2021 onward, including $144 million that moved after the exchange’s promise to implement stricter anti-money laundering controls, enhanced due diligence and real-time monitoring of suspicious activity as part of its plea deal with the U.S.

The report which has tracked the Know-Your-Customer documentation, IP logs, and transactions history has linked some of these suspicious accounts to jurisdictions such as Venezuela, Brazil, Syria, Niger, and China.

These have made regulators and AML specialists raise questions about how effectively binance has implemented the post-settlement oversight promises after the settlement.

Red Flags That Would Trigger Alarms at Regulated Institutions

Several of the individual cases cited exhibit behavior that former prosecutors and compliance professionals described as highly abnormal. One account, reportedly linked to a 25-year-old Venezuelan woman, received more than $177 million over two years and changed its associated bank details 647 times within a 14-month period.

Former prosecutors told FT that such activities would under normal circumstances prompted immediate investigation for potential unlicensed money-transmitting operations.

Another account, attributed to a junior bank employee living in a low-income area of Caracas, allegedly moved about $93 million between 2022 and May 2025. Login records also showed the account being accessed from Caracas and then from Osaka, Japan, less than 10 hours apart — a physical impossibility that compliance professionals told the Financial Times should automatically trigger internal review at a regulated financial institution.

Across the 13 accounts, investigators reportedly identified shared markers of suspicious behavior. Collectively, the accounts also received around $29 million in USDT from wallets later frozen by Israeli authorities under anti-terrorism legislation, further intensifying concerns over whether warning signs were adequately addressed in real time.

Binance Pushes Back as Compliance Questions Resurface

Binance rejected the framing of the report, claiming that it “takes compliance seriously” and evaluates transactions based on information available at the time they occur. The exchange argued that none of the wallets referenced were sanctioned when the activity took place and emphasized that it operates under independent monitorship oversight following its 2023 settlement.

The allegations nevertheless revive scrutiny of Binance’s compliance posture, particularly given the scale of its prior admissions. As part of the plea deal, US authorities said the exchange had failed to report more than 100,000 suspicious transactions tied to activities ranging from ransomware and narcotics trafficking to transfers involving terrorist organizations including al-Qaeda and ISIS.

The report also arrives amid renewed political attention on Binance following US President Donald Trump’s October pardon of founder Changpeng Zhao. While the pardon addressed Zhao’s personal conviction, it did not erase ongoing regulatory expectations placed on the exchange itself.

For critics, the latest findings underscore a persistent concern: that even after unprecedented enforcement action, suspicious activity may still pass through the crypto industry’s most influential platforms. Whether the allegations point to systemic shortcomings or unresolved execution challenges, they are likely to intensify calls for closer scrutiny of how compliance reforms are implemented in practice — not just promised on paper.