Binance Was Used to Funnel Money to Hamas, Other Militant Groups

In February 2019, Binance Holdings Ltd.’s then-Chief Compliance Officer Samuel Lim acknowledged that the cryptocurrency exchange was being used to funnel money to Hamas, explaining to a colleague that terrorists normally sent “small sums.”

Hamas could “barely buy an AK47 with 600 bucks,” the colleague responded in a chat message, according to the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s March lawsuit against the world’s largest crypto exchange.

That apparently nonchalant attitude caught up with Binance and its chief executive officer, Changpeng Zhao, on Tuesday. In announcing $4.3 billion in fines against the company and a guilty plea by Zhao ...