Photo: Getty Images
President Donald Trump signed a pardon for Changpeng Zhao, the co-founder of Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange, who was serving a four-month sentence on charges of enabling money laundering, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement obtained by NBC News on Thursday (October 23).
"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," Leavitt said. "In their desire to punish the cryptocurrency industry, the Biden Administration pursued Mr. Zhao despite no allegations of fraud or identifiable victims."
Zhao reached a plea deal with the Justice Department in November 2023 and agreed to pay over $4 billion to resolve violations related to the Bank Secrecy Act, failure to register as a money transmitting business, and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
“Binance became the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange in part because of the crimes it committed — now it is paying one of the largest corporate penalties in U.S. history,” said then-Attorney General Merrick Garland in 2023 via NBC News.
Then-Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen also accused Binance of committing "willful failures" that "allowed money to flow to terrorists, cybercriminals, and child abusers through its platform" at the time. Binance issued a statement saying it took "responsibility for this past chapter" in a blog post shared in November 2023.