Victims of Hamas\u2019 October 2023 attack on Israel have filed a lawsuit against Binance and its founder, Changpeng Zhao, accusing the cryptocurrency exchange of facilitating millions of dollars in payments to Hamas and other U.S.-designated terrorist organizations.<\/p>\n
According to a complaint made public on Monday, the world\u2019s largest cryptocurrency exchange allegedly laundered money for Hamas even after Zhao pleaded guilty in November 2023 and paid a $4.32 billion criminal penalty for violating federal anti-money-laundering and sanctions laws.<\/p>\n
The plaintiffs include 306 American victims of the Hamas attack, encompassing relatives of people killed, injured, or taken hostage, as well as victims of subsequent attacks by other groups.<\/p>\n
They claim that Binance knowingly enabled Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Iran\u2019s Revolutionary Guard to move more than $1 billion through its platform, including over $50 million after the October 7 attack.<\/p>\n
Zhao pleaded guilty to anti-money-laundering violations in connection with Binance\u2019s plea and served a four-month prison sentence. He was later pardoned by U.S. President Donald Trump on October 23.<\/p>\n
\u201cBinance intentionally structured itself as a refuge for illicit activity,\u201d the complaint states. \u201cTo this day, there is no indication that Binance has meaningfully altered its core business model.\u201d<\/p>\n
Binance declined to comment on the lawsuit but said it \u201ccomplies fully with internationally recognized sanctions laws.\u201d A lawyer representing Zhao in related litigation also declined to comment.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit seeks compensatory and triple damages, among other remedies.<\/p>\n
According to the complaint, large sums of cryptocurrency passed through accounts belonging to individuals with no clear financial means to justify the transactions. Among them is a Venezuelan woman reportedly operating a Brazilian livestock company, Fazenda Amazonia (Amazonia Farm in English). Her account, opened in 2022 at age 26, allegedly received more than $177 million in deposits, with over $130 million withdrawn, the complaint says.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen a company chooses profit over even the most basic counterterrorism obligations, it must be held accountable, and it will be,\u201d said Lee Wolosky, a lawyer for the plaintiffs.<\/p>\n
The complaint was filed in federal court in North Dakota and notes that at least two suspicious transactions occurred via online addresses in Kindred, a town of about 1,000 residents.<\/p>\n
Binance and Zhao are also defending a separate lawsuit in Manhattan federal court brought by other victims of the Hamas attack. That case alleges that the defendants provided a \u201cclandestine\u201d funding mechanism for Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad for several years. A judge rejected the defendants\u2019 motion to dismiss that case in February.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Victims of Hamas\u2019 October 2023 attack on Israel have filed a lawsuit against Binance and its founder, Changpeng…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":151918,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-151917","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}