Binance sues Wall Street Journal over Iran sanctions report

Binance has filed a defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal after the media outlet tried to expose the exchange for helping Iran to evade US sanctions.

Binance has now filed a lawsuit, seeking compensation for the damages, legal fees while demanding a jury trial to clear its name.

Binance claims that it wasn't aware of any active DOJ investigation tied to alleged Iran-related activity on its platform and pushed back strongly against the newspaper’s reporting. One of Binance's spokesperson added

“As always, we are collaborating with regulators and law enforcement to investigate the facts.”

The Wall Street Journal report alleged that Binance had been helping Iran-backed groups, including Yemen's Houthi militants to hide their illegal fundings through the use of crypto. The article also cited company documents and people familiar with the matter.

However, the report also acknowledged that it remains unclear whether authorities are investigating Binance itself, its users, or both. Officials have reportedly contacted individuals with knowledge of the transactions as part of efforts to gather evidence and better understand the alleged flows. At the time of publication, the DOJ had not publicly confirmed any investigation related to the claims.

Binance said the reporting mischaracterized the situation and maintains that it has continued working with regulators and law enforcement agencies to monitor and investigate suspicious activity on the platform.

Dispute centers on alleged $1B Iran-linked transactions

The legal clash follows a previous report published by the Journal in February, which claimed that Binance had dismantled an internal compliance investigation into roughly $1 billion in transactions connected to networks associated with Iranian proxy groups.

Binance has strongly denied that allegation. According to the company, the internal review was never shut down, and its compliance teams continued examining the transactions as part of broader efforts to detect complex financial activity across multiple jurisdictions.

The exchange said the investigation uncovered what it described as a sophisticated, multi-jurisdictional network of financial flows spanning Asia, the Middle East and other regions. Binance later published a blog post expanding on those findings and addressing what it called false or misleading claims surrounding the alleged transactions.

The dispute highlights ongoing tensions between major cryptocurrency platforms and traditional media outlets reporting on regulatory and compliance issues within the industry.

The controversy also comes amid continued scrutiny of Binance by US authorities following a landmark enforcement action in 2023.

That year, the exchange pleaded guilty to violating US anti–money laundering and sanctions laws and agreed to pay $4.3 billion in penalties, one of the largest settlements ever imposed on a cryptocurrency company. As part of the agreement, Binance also committed to operating under ongoing compliance monitoring.

Former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty to related charges in the same case and served a four-month prison sentence in 2024. Zhao later received a presidential pardon from Donald Trump in October 2025.

Against that backdrop, the lawsuit against the Journal signals a more aggressive response by Binance as it seeks to challenge allegations linking the exchange to potential sanctions violations involving Iranian networks.