According to Fortune, Binance fired at least five members of its compliance investigation team after reporting over $1 billion in transactions suspected to be linked to Iranian-related entities.
These transactions are reported to have occurred between March 2024 and August 2025. These transactions were said to have been made using Tether (USDT) stablecoin on the Tron blockchain.
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The dismissals are reported to have begun at the end of 2025. Many of the dismissed employees had law enforcement backgrounds and held senior investigative roles.
Fortune reported that in recent months, at least four senior compliance officers have either resigned or been fired.
The reported flow of funds amounting to $1 billion was denominated in USDT and moved through the Tron network. Such combinations have appeared several times in recent enforcement cases related to sanctions associated with Iran.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned two UK-registered cryptocurrency exchanges, Zedcex and Zedxion. The exchanges are said to have processed nearly $1 billion worth of transactions linked to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
According to OFAC and blockchain analysis reports cited by TRM Labs and Chainalysis, a significant portion of these activities has been conducted using Tron-based USDT.
Meanwhile, BeinCrypto reported in January that Iran's central bank had accumulated over $500 million in USDT amid pressure on the Iranian rial. The blockchain analysis firm Elliptic analyzed that these purchases were made to secure hard liquidity outside of traditional banking systems, effectively creating parallel dollar reserves.
These cases show that stablecoins, particularly USDT, have become central to cross-border money flows associated with Iran.
Binance has not officially acknowledged whether the controversial Iran-related transactions violated sanctions laws, and no new enforcement actions by regulatory authorities have been announced related to this report.
However, this issue is unfolding amid broader oversight of the role that stablecoin infrastructure and exchanges play within the geopolitical sanctions framework.