Binance CEO denies involvement in $61M Iran military oil black market

Binance chief executive Richard Teng has come out to clarify that the US DOJ is not specifically targeting the exchange in the latest forfeiture action to freeze Iranian black market oil sales, going up to around $61 million in cryptocurrencies.

The Binance CEO’s pushback came within a day of federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York initiating the clawback process, moving to pull the exchange out of the firing line after it got dragged again into Iran’s sanctions-evasion machinery.

Did the SDNY accuse Binance in Iranian sale of sanctioned oil? 

Teng directly clarified that Binance was not a target of the US DOJ action on Tuesday. “As Bloomberg’s article notes, this case was not filed against @binance and does not allege any wrongdoing by Binance,” he wrote on X, adding that the exchange has “zero tolerance for sanctions violations or illicit activity” and “did not permit any transactions with sanctioned individuals.”

Teng directed his X audience to verify the distinction in the court documents. Binance does not fit any of the qualifications of a defendant in a forfeiture action, which refers to assets and the entities alleged to control them. 

Those two, in this case, are Blessed Trust, Hexa Whale, and people connected to them. Binance was named in the document, but only as a venue. The prosecutors from the New York office did not specifically accuse the exchange of wrongdoing. 

Per the SDNY-led civil forfeiture complaint announced by Deputy U.S. Attorney Sean S. Buckley and FBI Assistant Director in Charge James C. Barnacle, Jr., federal prosecutors have their sights on about $61 million in cryptocurrency they claim the Iranian regime made from black-market crude oil sales. 

Blessed Trust, a wealth-management or custodial firm, and Hexa Whale, which presents as a commodities broker, have both been accused of being fronts for converting cash into crypto for Iran-linked clients. 

Reports have flagged that both targeted firms have Chinese oil companies on their client list.

The $1.5 billion behind the seizure

The $61 million is a slice of something far larger. Investigators say a cluster of self-custodied wallets they label “Entity A” has taken in and pushed out more than $1.5 billion in illicit Iranian oil proceeds, routing the money to IRGC-linked money-services businesses, IRGC crypto addresses, and an Iranian exchange. 

Washington has already designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization.

“The Government of Iran used a network of cryptocurrency actors in China and elsewhere to launder more than $1.5 billion in illicit oil money,” Buckley said in the DOJ statement.

That figure fits a pattern US agencies have been chasing for more than a year. Al Jazeera reported in April that Chainalysis valued Iran’s crypto ecosystem at over $7.78 billion in the prior year, with the IRGC accounting for roughly half of on-chain activity in the fourth quarter, as Tehran turned to digital assets to sell oil and skirt banking restrictions.

Not the first time Binance has been tied to Iran flows

This is the latest instance of Binance being linked to Iranian money without being charged. In August, Cryptopolitan reported that a Reuters investigation traced at least $4 billion moved over two years by the sanctioned exchange Shelbit, with part of it passing through Binance. 

At least $676 million reportedly flowed from Shelbit-connected wallets onto Binance, including about $540 million after Dubai’s regulator penalized Shelbit. Binance denied holding any Shelbit-controlled accounts and called the $540 million figure inaccurate, saying any linked accounts had already been frozen and reported.

The forfeiture action also lands inside the Treasury’s broader “Economic Fury” campaign against Iran, which has sanctioned Nobitex, Shelbit, Aban Tether, and wallets tied to Iran’s central bank.

Binance still operates under a three-year compliance monitorship stemming from its 2023 guilty plea to US anti-money-laundering and sanctions charges, which carried $4.3 billion in penalties. 

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