MANHATTAN PROSECUTORS ARE ASKING WHETHER BINANCE KNOWINGLY LET IRAN TRADES THROUGH — BINANCE’S OWN CEILING IS $126 MILLION — HOURS LATER, CIRCLE FILED ITS $100 MILLION SALE TO BINANCE

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan, with the Justice Department’s criminal division in Washington, are investigating whether Binance knowingly allowed trading that broke U.S. sanctions on Iran, Bloomberg reported, per CoinDesk and Decrypt. The specific transactions were not disclosed. Binance’s answer: “We maintain a zero-tolerance policy for sanctions violations. We fully cooperate with law enforcement, and we remain committed to rooting out and shutting down bad actors.” Cointelegraph notes the statement does not say whether Binance knows about the probe.

The dollar fight is seven months old. Reports in February put $1 billion to $1.7 billion moving through Binance to Iran-linked entities. Binance’s own count, per Decrypt: at most $126.1 million reached Iran-linked wallets after multiple transfers, and at most $24.1 million reached wallets tied to the IRGC. That is the company’s best case. Prosecutors are not asking how much. They are asking whether Binance knew.

That word carries weight because of 2023. Binance pleaded guilty then to failing U.S. banking and sanctions rules, paid $4.3 billion and took on two corporate monitors. Founder Changpeng Zhao served four months in prison and was pardoned by President Trump in 2025. The new question, as Decrypt puts it, is whether the 2023 fixes held.

Then came the filing. Circle’s 8-K, filed September 22, says it sold Binance 1,237,011 Class A shares at $80.84 on September 17, $100 million in all, locked up for as long as two years. Under a five-year deal, Circle pays Binance a monthly fee set as a percentage of the USDC held through Circle’s wallet service, and Binance promotes USDC. The filing does not give the percentage. It says the deal can end “upon the occurrence of certain specified events” and does not list them. The stablecoin company that sells itself on compliance now pays the exchange under a sanctions probe to hold its dollars. At the time of this writing, bitcoin was $86,096.