President Donald Trump pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, who created the largest cryptocurrency exchange.
Zhao pleaded guilty in 2023 for “violations related to the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), failure to register as a money transmitting business, and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA),” the Justice Department said at the time. He served four months in prison following his April 2024 sentencing.
The DOJ explained that because it served U.S. customers, Binance was “required to register with [Financial Crimes Enforcement Network] as a money services business and to implement an effective [anti-money laundering] program that was reasonably designed to prevent Binance from being used to facilitate money laundering.” The agency stated Binance “chose not to comply with U.S. law and failed to implement controls and procedures to prevent money laundering.”
“President Trump exercised his constitutional authority by issuing a pardon for Mr. Zhao, who was prosecuted by the Biden Administration in their war on cryptocurrency,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement obtained by CBS News. “In their desire to punish the cryptocurrency industry, the Biden administration pursued Mr. Zhao despite no allegations of fraud or identifiable victims.”
“The Biden administration sought to imprison Mr. Zhao for three years, a sentence so outside sentencing guidelines that even the judge said he had never heard of this in his 30-year career,” she said. “These actions by the Biden Administration severely damaged the United States’ reputation as a global leader in technology and innovation. The Biden administration’s war on crypto is over.”
