Binance Faces Fresh Sanctions Probe Over Alleged Iranian Oil Money Laundering

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed civil forfeiture complaints to seize $61 million in allegedly laundered Iranian oil money that passed through Binance, a cryptocurrency exchange.

The DOJ alleges that Iran built a network of China-based crypto entities to launder over $1.5 billion in illicit oil money, some of which financed the country's military and its regional proxies.

Blessed Trust and Hexa Whale Trading Limited, two Hong Kong-registered firms, sit at the center of the government's case. Blessed Trust moved more than $1.2 billion through Binance into a cluster of linked crypto addresses investigators call 'Entity A', while Hexa Whale sent roughly $500 million into that same network.

Binance had granted Hexa Whale VIP trading status even after its own compliance staff flagged the firm for using false documents, according to Fortune's reporting. The exchange is not being targeted directly in the forfeiture case, but the allegations land on Binance's reputation at an awkward moment: a sitting senator questioning whether its DOJ and FinCEN monitors are doing their jobs.