U.S. Treasury pressures top exchange over $1B Iran transfers

The U.S. Treasury Department has "privately" asked Binance to follow a "monitoring program" that the world's leading cryptocurrency trading exchange agreed to as part of its 2023 guilty plea amid news reports of over $1 billion in funds moving through it to Iran-linked "entities," The Information reported on May 7.

With the United States and Israel fighting a war with Iran, the Western powers are also trying to economically pressure Iran.

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Binance denied sanctions violations

It was in February that Fortune reported that investigators on Binance’s compliance team uncovered evidence that Iran-linked entities had received more than $1 billion through the exchange from March 2024 through August 2025, in "potential violation of sanctions laws."

But the company then fired at least five of these investigators, as per the Fortune report—a claim Binance CEO Richard Teng had denied, saying that neither were any sanctions violations found nor were any investigators fired.

"Binance continues to meet its regulatory commitments," Teng then claimed.

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U.S. Treasury demands compliance from Binance

As per the report by The Information, the Treasury wrote a letter to Binance "in the past few weeks" in which Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Gene Lange reminded the crypto exchange to comply with the Treasury-imposed monitoring program it had agreed to follow after pleading guilty to sanctions and anti-money laundering (AML) violations.

“Binance is committed to cooperating with the independent monitor and our ongoing collaboration with relevant agencies," a Binance spokesperson told TheStreet Roundtable. "We welcome constructive feedback from the Treasury and view this oversight as an important part of continuously strengthening our compliance and anti-money laundering controls. We are providing the monitor with full cooperation and transparency.”

TheStreet Roundtable reached out to the U.S. Treasury Department for a comment and did not receive one by the time of publication.

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