Binance 2023 criminal resolution

What Binance and Zhao admitted in 2023

On 21 November 2023, the US Department of Justice announced guilty pleas by Binance and its founder Changpeng Zhao. The company’s case covered anti-money-laundering, unlicensed money-transmission and sanctions violations. Zhao separately admitted failing to maintain an effective anti-money-laundering programme and resigned as CEO. The corporate resolution exceeded $4 billion. These were specified criminal admissions, not merely accusations in a social-media dispute.

The DOJ account describes a commercial choice to retain US business without the required controls. It records efforts to help valuable US customers appear to be offshore, including registering accounts for offshore entities. That conduct matters because the enforcement issue was not simply that a large exchange had some illicit users. The admitted failure concerned the controls the business deliberately did not implement while earning revenue from the market. DOJ resolution and linked plea documents.

The subsequent record must be included

Separate proceedings and their recorded dates

Date	Record	Subject
21 November 2023	Guilty pleas announced	Company and individual criminal cases
30 April 2024	Four-month prison sentence and $50 million fine	Zhao individually
29 May 2025	Joint stipulation to dismiss with prejudice	The SEC’s separate civil enforcement action
21 October 2025	Pardon listed in the federal clemency register	Zhao individually

The SEC’s May 2025 announcement says it sought dismissal as an exercise of discretion and policy. It also says the decision does not necessarily state its position in other proceedings. An account that repeats the original SEC allegations without this dismissal leaves out a material development. Conversely, a decision in that civil action should not be described as reversing a different criminal case. SEC dismissal announcement.

The DOJ clemency register lists Zhao’s sentence and the later pardon under 21 October 2025. This is the register’s grant date; it should not be silently replaced by the date a news story announced the pardon. The entry concerns Zhao. It does not list Binance as the recipient of that individual grant. Federal clemency register.

What these records do and do not prove

Use the proceedings to establish the conduct they address. They do not, by themselves, establish that every trade on Binance was manipulated, that all customer balances were fictitious or that every BNB Chain application is controlled by Binance. Those propositions involve different evidence: trading records, liabilities, asset control or the permissions of particular applications.

For example, a claim that an exchange favoured a related market maker should identify the relationship, the advantage and the records showing it. A compliance conviction cannot substitute for those missing records. This does not make the proposed inquiry unimportant; it identifies what must still be established before publishing a specific accusation.

Follow the financial relationship as its own inquiry

The wiki’s MGX, Binance and USD1 entry covers the documented request for records concerning the Trump-linked stablecoin transaction. A financial relationship and a later pardon can be placed in chronological order without claiming that one purchased the other. Evidence of the transaction, the benefit to its participants and any alleged agreement should each be identified separately.

For the wider profile, see Binance and Changpeng Zhao. This entry concentrates on the proceedings so readers can distinguish an admission, a sentence, a civil dismissal and a pardon instead of treating them as interchangeable verdicts.

Sources

• DOJ: resolution announced 21 November 2023
• SEC: civil dismissal announcement, 29 May 2025
• DOJ: Zhao sentence and pardon entry
• US DOJ: Binance and Zhao guilty pleas, 21 November 2023

Sources checked on 13 September 2026.