U.S. prosecutors want to seize $61 million in cryptocurrency that allegedly moved through Binance accounts as proceeds of sanctioned Iranian oil sales, though the exchange is not a defendant.
Richard Teng, the exchange's co-CEO, has denied any wrongdoing by Binance, calling earlier Iran-laundering allegations against it false and defamatory.
Key Points:
- The Justice Department wants $61 million in crypto tied to black-market sales of Iranian crude.
- Two China-based firms, Blessed Trust and Hexa Whale, allegedly routed the money through exchange trading accounts.
- Binance is not a defendant and says it never permitted sanctioned transactions.
Blessed Trust And Hexa Whale Accounts
The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York filed the civil forfeiture complaint on Sept. 14, targeting the money itself rather than any exchange. Prosecutors alleged that two China-based companies, Blessed Trust and Hexa Whale, used trading accounts on the platform to funnel black-market oil revenue to Iran and its proxies.
Blessed Trust presents itself to financial firms as a digital asset custodial service, while quietly converting fiat currency into crypto for Iran-linked transactions. Hexa Whale played a similar role behind the cover of a commodities brokerage. Both companies counted Chinese oil and petroleum firms among their clients.
Investigators traced a cluster of unhosted wallets, labeled Entity A, that handled more than $1.5 billion in illicit oil revenue. Those wallets pushed money toward an Iranian exchange and businesses tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization.
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Sean Buckley Presses The Iran Case
Deputy U.S. Attorney Sean S. Buckley said the case aims to "deprive the Government of Iran and its terrorist proxies of the illegal money" they rely on. He argued that Tehran leans on black-market crude to fund its military, its nuclear program and its ballistic missile work. Civil forfeiture lets the government pursue assets without winning a criminal conviction first.
Binance is not a defendant, and the complaint accuses it of no wrongdoing. The exchange said it has zero tolerance for sanctions violations, did not permit transactions with sanctioned individuals, and would cooperate with law enforcement while freezing accounts where risk appears.
Richard Teng And Binance's Record
The filing revisits ground the exchange thought it had covered. Its two named counterparties sat at the center of a Senate inquiry earlier this year, when co-CEO Richard Teng called the reported allegations false and defamatory. The complaint also arrives two weeks before Britain opens its new licensing window, a compliance-heavy process it plans to enter Sept. 30.
Binance's Iran exposure runs back further, to a 2023 guilty plea over sanctions violations that cost the exchange a $4.3 billion penalty. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent outlined secondary sanctions last month aimed at Iran's digital assets, gold, aviation and shipping, following June sanctions on the Iranian exchange Nobitex.
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