Trump just pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the billionaire founder of Binance, who served four months in prison for letting criminals use his exchange to launder money connected to child sex abuse, drug trafficking, and terrorism. The pardon caps off a months-long lobbying effort by CZ and his supporters in the crypto world.
Trump said he’d been told by “a lot of very good people” that CZ wasn’t actually guilty of anything and had been “persecuted by the Biden administration.” The president claimed he’d never even met Zhao personally but gave him the pardon because so many people requested it.
CZ pleaded guilty last year to violating the Bank Secrecy Act by not implementing proper anti-money laundering controls at Binance. Prosecutors said he allowed over 1.5 million crypto trades totaling nearly $900 million that violated US sanctions, including transactions involving Hamas, al-Qaeda, and Iran.
The judge at his sentencing was troubled by CZ’s “better to ask forgiveness than permission” approach to US banking laws. CZ became the first person ever sentenced to prison for Bank Secrecy Act violations.
World Liberty Financial, Trump’s family crypto project, got early support from a UAE fund using $2 billion of their stablecoin to buy a Binance stake. Their separate token spiked massively after the pardon news broke, outpacing every other major cryptocurrency.
Conclusion
Trump pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao after a four-month prison sentence for money laundering violations, citing Biden administration persecution following months of crypto industry lobbying efforts.
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