Changpeng Zhao, founder and former CEO of Binance, has been sentenced to four months in prison in the United States. According to the information, Zhao pleaded guilty in November 2023 to a money laundering charge.
During the court hearing on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Richard Jones confirmed that Zhao has also fulfilled the requirement to pay $50 million in fines.
Judge Jones decided not to impose the recommended five months of probation by the probation officer, as reported by Mail Online. The 47-year-old admitted to willfully failing to establish an effective anti-money laundering system at Binance, the cryptocurrency exchange he led from July 2017 to November 2023, violating the Bank Secrecy Act.
Furthermore, Binance itself pleaded guilty to similar charges from the US Department of Justice in November 2023 and was ordered to pay $4.3 billion in fines and restitution for failing to register as a money transmitting business, according to Forbes.
U.S. prosecutors had urged the court to sentence Zhao to three years in prison, emphasizing the seriousness of his violations and the need to send a deterrent message to others.
Following the court order, Zhao had to surrender his Canadian passport and notify authorities before traveling within the U.S. These conditions were imposed by U.S. District Judge Richard A. Jones, who also restricted Zhao’s bond conditions. Zhao was released on bail of $175 million as part of a $4.3 billion settlement with the Department of Justice. The plea agreement came after years of investigation into Binance’s operations, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange.
In December, Judge Jones prevented Zhao from leaving the U.S. until a verdict was reached in his case.
In February, the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Olayemi Cardoso, alleged that $26 billion had passed through Binance Nigeria from unknown sources and users in one year. This accusation occurred amid the depreciation of the naira and the Nigerian government’s crackdown on Bureaux de Change.
In connection with these allegations, the Nigerian government arrested two Binance executives for alleged money laundering – Tigran Gambaryan, a U.S. citizen and head of financial crime compliance at Binance, and Nadeem Anjarwalla, a British-Kenyan who serves as the cryptocurrency trading firm’s African regional manager.
Anjarwalla later escaped from detention and fled to Kenya, while their trial commenced in a Federal High Court in Abuja.
