The US Department of Justice has accused several companies of using the cryptocurrency exchange Binance to funnel roughly $1.5 billion to Iran, allegedly to help fund the country's military, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Prosecutors disclosed the scheme in a forfeiture complaint seeking to seize $61 million in cryptocurrency, and the allegations mark the latest in a string of controversies involving Binance and its handling of sanctioned funds.

Federal prosecutors say two Hong Kong-based firms, Hexa Whale and Blessed Trust, acted as intermediaries selling black-market Iranian oil to Chinese buyers, with proceeds moved through Binance and, in some cases, routed via the US financial system to obscure their origin. Binance says its own investigators uncovered the transactions and subsequently removed both companies from its platform, though it also fired some of the staff who identified the suspicious activity, citing "individual circumstances." The case follows Binance's 2023 guilty plea to anti-money-laundering and sanctions violations, for which it paid billions in fines, and comes after founder Changpeng Zhao served four months in prison before receiving a full pardon from President Trump last year.