\n<\/p>\n
Changpeng Zhao, the multibillionaire founder of crypto exchange Binance, spent four months last year locked in a federal prison. After US president Donald Trump pardoned Zhao in October, the government has recast him as a martyr.<\/p>\n
Zhao, who goes by CZ, pled guilty in November 2023 to failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program at Binance. In parallel, Binance admitted to violating US sanctions and settled with financial regulators, which accused the company of failing to report suspicious transactions involving terror groups, child exploitation networks, and cybercriminals, among other violations. In a particularly incriminating exchange detailed in court documents, one Binance employee said to a colleague, \u201cwe see the bad, but we close 2 eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n
As part of their respective settlement deals, Zhao agreed to forfeit his role as Binance CEO, and Binance agreed to leave the US, accept supervision by a US-appointed compliance monitor, and pay a record $4.3 billion penalty.<\/p>\n
Less than two years later, the narrative has flipped. On October 23, Trump struck the charges from Zhao\u2019s criminal record. The Binance founder was a victim of the \u201cBiden administration\u2019s war on crypto,\u201d a White House spokesperson declared.<\/p>\n
The decision to pardon Zhao will reverberate throughout the US crypto exchange market, which Binance could seek to reenter, legal experts claim. It may also come with long-term political consequences for the crypto industry after Trump\u2019s presidency ends.<\/p>\n
Whether Zhao\u2019s pardon was justified has been hotly disputed, particularly in light of connections between Binance and World Liberty Financial, a crypto business founded by Trump and his sons. (Through a corporate entity, the Trump family owns a 38 percent stake in World Liberty Financial\u2019s parent company.) In May, Binance agreed to receive a $2 billion investment denominated in USD1, a coin issued by World Liberty Financial, which could earn tens of millions of dollars from the arrangement. In July, Bloomberg reported that Binance had developed the codebase for USD1.<\/p>\n
Remarkably, Trump claims to know very little about Zhao. \u201cOkay, are you ready? I don’t know who he is,\u201d Trump told 60 Minutes<\/em> in an interview that aired on November 2. \u201cI can only tell you this. My sons are into [crypto],\u201d he said later in the interview.<\/p>\n Zhao\u2019s legal representatives and industry allies have defended the pardon as a rightful corrective. \u201cCZ is the first and only known first-time offender in US history to receive a prison sentence for this single, non-fraud-related charge,\u201d wrote Teresa Goody Guill\u00e9n, partner at law firm Baker & Hostetler, which represents Zhao, in an X post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Changpeng Zhao, the multibillionaire founder of crypto exchange Binance, spent four months last year locked in a federal prison. After US president Donald Trump pardoned Zhao in October, the government has recast him as a martyr. Zhao, who goes by CZ, pled guilty in November 2023 to failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32121,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[12151,4398,265,7287,71,550],"class_list":{"0":"post-32120","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-bracing","9":"tag-crypto","10":"tag-impact","11":"tag-pardon","12":"tag-trumps","13":"tag-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32120\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}