Sanctioned Iranian businessman helped regime skirt sanctions using crypto exchange — report

WSJ says Babak Zanjani has moved some $850M for Islamic Republic on Binance, which is being ‘used as a financial artery for the IRGC’ despite Trump’s pardon of the firm’s founder

Iranian tycoon Babak Zanjani, whom the US has sanctioned for processing funds for Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, carried out cryptocurrency transactions worth some $850 million on behalf of the regime on the world’s largest crypto exchange, Binance, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

The transactions are said to have taken place over two years, with most of them originating from a single trading account that was active for at least 15 months as of January, a month before the start of the US-Israel war against Iran. The report said “the vast sums show how Binance has been used as a financial artery for the IRGC,” using the acronym for Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The transactions, comprising both deposits and withdrawals, went through despite repeated red flags from Binance’s internal investigators, and led to an estimated $425 million being funneled into the Iranian military, the Journal said, citing Binance documents, law enforcement officials and other sources familiar with the activity.

According to the report, the transactions were carried out through a network of accounts operated from the same devices by Zanjani and associates, including his sister, romantic partner and a director of one of Zanjani’s companies.

Zanjani has long been a key figure in Iran’s sanctions-evasion networks. He was sentenced to death by Iranian authorities in 2016 for embezzlement. His sentence was commuted in 2024. But Zanjani remains locked in a public spat with Iran’s central bank, which accused him of failing to repay the stolen billions, and in December he published wallet addresses on social media that enabled outside crypto analysts to uncover a complex sanctions-evasion scheme, with Iranian crypto exchange Nobitex at its core.

Zanjani’s network is said to have facilitated the transfer via Binance of over $1.7 billion that was flagged internally last November, “moving from Chinese clients into digital wallets used by Iran to finance its proxies.” The Journal reported earlier this year that Binance dismantled the team investigating that cash flow.

According to the newspaper, foreign law-enforcement officials tracking billions of dollars flowing through Binance accounts to Iranian entities associated with the regime have identified transactions “as recently as this month.”

Binance, which has sued the Journal over its past reporting, insisted the transactions reportedly linked to Zanjani “have nothing to do” with the crypto platform, and that “Binance has zero-tolerance for illicit activity on its platform.”

In 2023, Binance founder Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty in the US to violating money-laundering and sanctions laws. US President Donald Trump pardoned him last year, though Binance is again being investigated over Iran’s suspected continued use of the platform. Binance is a chief backer of the Trump family’s crypto venture, World Liberty Financial.

The Journal report came days after Reuters reported that Nobitex has processed at least $2.3 billion since 2023 BNB Chain and Tron, blockchains established respectively under Zhao and fellow crypto billionaires Justin Sun, and that Iranian money has kept moving through those two digital ledgers during the recent war. Users of Tron and BNB Chain pay fees to use the blockchains, which serve as secure, tamper-resistant record keepers.

Like Binance, Sun is a prominent backer of World Liberty Financial, though there is no suggestion that the Trump family knew of Nobitex’s use of Tron and BNB Chain.

Since taking office, Trump has launched a suite of crypto-friendly policies and US regulators have paused enforcement actions against crypto companies and moguls. The Securities and Exchange Commission settled a lawsuit against Sun for alleged fraud in March for $10 million without Sun admitting any wrongdoing.