Binance chief executive Richard Teng has threatened legal action against the Wall Street Journal over what he called “inaccurate reporting” that internal investigators uncovered $1.7 billion in digital assets flowing to Iranian-linked entities.
In a post on X, Teng described the article as containing “defamatory claims,” and the exchange’s lawyers at Withers Bergman wrote to the paper demanding “immediate corrections and a full retraction of these false statements.”
“Your Article is false, seriously misleading to your readers, and defamatory of our client,”
Said the letter to Wall Street Journal editor-in-chief, Emma Tucker, from lawyers at Withers Bergman.
A report by the New York Times published the same day made similar allegations that four investigators were fired or suspended after identifying $1.7 billion in transfers from two Binance accounts to Iranian entities with alleged links to terrorist groups, while Binance said its responses were not properly reflected and pointed to a prior blog post detailing its compliance programme.
Multiple outlets later reported that US Senator Richard Blumenthal had opened an inquiry into potential sanctions violations, requesting records concerning dealings with two Hong Kong entities identified in the internal investigation.
The dispute comes as former Binance chief executive Changpeng Zhao, who stepped down in 2023 and served four months in prison under a $4.3 billion settlement with US authorities over anti-money laundering failures, recently appeared at a crypto forum organised by World Liberty Financial and indicated that Binance.US aims to expand its US operations.