The Wall Street Journal published a new investigation claiming at least $850 million in transactions tied to sanctioned Iranian financier Babak Zanjani flowed through Binance accounts and eventually reached Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Binance CEO Richard Teng rejected the report publicly, calling it fundamentally inaccurate. The exchange had already filed a defamation lawsuit against the Journal before this latest story appeared.
What the WSJ Investigation Claims
Zanjani and his firm Zedcex sit at the center of the investigation. Zedcex accounts, along with profiles belonging to Zanjani's sister, his romantic partner, and a company director, all logged into the platform from the same devices. Over two years, this network moved $850 million through Binance.
In late 2024, Binance's internal compliance team flagged the Zedcex account after detecting logins from Tehran. The account stayed open for more than a year after that. During this period it triggered over a dozen new internal alerts. Binance's own security analysts recommended blocking all linked accounts and reporting them to authorities. That recommendation was never followed.
Beyond the Zanjani network, WSJ provides two more data points. Iran's central bank transferred $107 million in crypto through Binance accounts in 2025. A foreign law enforcement agency tracked roughly $260 million in direct transactions between Binance accounts and Iranian terrorist financiers during 2024 and 2025. This May 2026 piece is the third WSJ story on this topic: in February the paper reported ~$1 billion through Iranian proxy networks, in March it said the DOJ is probing new sanctions violations committed after the 2023 settlement.
CEO's Defense and the Defamation Suit
Teng posted on X shortly after publication. He called the report fundamentally inaccurate and made three points. First, all flagged transactions occurred before the relevant individuals were placed under US sanctions. Second, Binance discovered the problematic activity independently and launched its own review before WSJ contacted the company. Third, the publication left out key facts Binance provided.
WSJ responds with Binance's own compliance documents. The paper cites internal reports that logged Tehran logins, recorded more than a dozen triggered alerts, and included a recommendation to block the accounts. If those documents are genuine and complete, the "before sanctions" argument does not explain why the accounts stayed open in 2025, when sanctions were already in force and alerts had already fired.
Binance filed a defamation lawsuit demanding a jury trial. An open court process, if it gets there, will require both sides to disclose internal documents. That alone creates a structural overhang of uncertainty lasting at least a year.
The 2023 Precedent and a Different Legal Risk
In November 2023, Binance pleaded guilty to money laundering and sanctions violations and paid a record $4.3 billion fine. For the entire crypto industry, that was a record. Founder CZ stepped down as CEO and later served a four-month federal prison sentence. The settlement required a complete overhaul of the compliance program.
Teng took over with a clear mandate: repair the relationship with regulators. But 2026 differs from 2023 in one critical way. In 2023, a new deal was negotiated from scratch. Now the question is whether an existing plea agreement has been violated. That opens a different legal scenario entirely.
Breaching a plea agreement can lead not to a new fine but to the reversal of the original deal and full criminal prosecution with fresh charges. New defendants, new penalties, a new cost for shareholders and clients. Legal analysts describe this risk as structurally more serious than any one-time financial outflow. The market does not appear to have fully priced that in yet.
What This Means for BNB and Market Liquidity
BNB is trading near $651 at the time of this report. The market has not reacted sharply yet, but put option volumes have risen. After the previous WSJ scandal in February 2026, BNB lost 8-12% within 48 hours of publication.
BNB anchors BNB Chain: gas fees, staking, smart contract liquidity. Projects planning to raise capital through BNB Chain are already weighing regulatory risk. A forced restriction on Binance would reduce network activity and pressure ecosystem derivatives.
Binance processes over 40% of global spot trading volume. Any major restriction on its operations will shift liquidity to Coinbase, OKX, Kraken and Bybit. Holders of Bitcoin and USDT on Binance should check how much of their portfolio sits on a single exchange.
What to Watch Next
The central question for the market is what the DOJ will do. The department is already investigating. This new WSJ piece, packed with internal document details, may accelerate the investigation's public phase. Timing is unpredictable.
If the DOJ announces new action, the sequence becomes clearer. First, sharp BNB volatility. Then analyst downgrades. Then a possible retreat by institutional clients who must maintain their own sanctions compliance independently.
The second thing to watch is the defamation case. If it reaches open court, internal documents from both sides become public. The real picture of the transactions described in the investigation will either remove pressure on BNB or amplify it. Until official decisions arrive, the market will price in uncertainty: for BNB that means potential swings of 10-20% from current levels after each new signal from the DOJ or the courts.
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