• Reserves deadlock: Frustrated EU states press Belgium to release €140 billion of frozen Russian assets to aid Ukraine, while PM Bart De Wever warns of potential Russian clawback liability.
• Commission proposal: European Commission seeks EU agreement at Dec. 18 Council to transfer the reserves as reparations loans for Kyiv's economy.
• Transparency accusations: Five anonymous diplomats claim Belgium is not disclosing how tax income from the immobilized assets is used and suggest it remains in the federal budget.
• Budgetary concerns: Diplomats question whether Belgium reroutes regular tax revenue for Ukraine or primarily relies on Russia-reserve taxes.
• EU scrutiny: Officials say upcoming meetings will question Belgium’s compliance with commitments and whether its actions align with European security priorities.
• Belgian response: Government insists all corporate tax revenue from Russian reserves at Euroclear is earmarked for Ukraine and estimates €1 billion for 2025.
• Support contributions: Belgium states it has provided nearly €1 billion since 2022 from federal sources in addition to using windfall tax revenue for military and limited civilian aid.
• Unfulfilled pledge: After accusations last year, Belgium promised to channel the tax revenues through an EU/G7 instrument but never implemented the transparency mechanism, prompting diplomat suspicion that the revenue remained part of domestic budgets.

BRUSSELS — Frustrated EU countries are ramping up pressure on Belgium to release €140 billion of frozen Russian reserves held in Brussels by accusing Bart De Wever's government of failing to fully disclose what it does with the tax income from those immobilized assets.

The European Commission wants the 27 EU countries to agree to send the Russian reserves as a reparations loan to Kyiv at a crunch European Council meeting on Dec. 18, in a drive to bail out the Ukrainian economy.

But Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever is resisting — and ratcheted up his opposition on Thursday evening — arguing Belgium will be on the hook if Moscow claws back the billions.

Five diplomats from different European countries, however, complained that Belgium appears to have a secondary agenda in holding onto Russia's money thanks to the tax generated. They noted Belgium was breaking an international commitment — made last year — to disclose what it was doing with tax from the frozen reserves, which is supposed to go to Ukraine.

The diplomats said the money was still being folded into the Belgian national budget, making it impossible to determine whether Belgium is fully living up to its commitments to Kyiv. The diplomats spoke on condition that they — and the countries they represent — remain anonymous. Belgium strenuously denies it is doing anything wrong.

If Belgium continues to push back on sending the frozen funds to Kyiv, the diplomats said, EU member countries will increasingly use meetings in the run-up to the European Council summit to question whether Belgium is profiting from the tax income or delaying payments to Ukraine. They also query whether Belgium is using regular tax revenue to support Ukraine — as other European countries are — or is simply relying on tax from the Russian reserves.

"In light of this ongoing foot-dragging behavior, one wonders whether it has actually been understood that it's Europe’s security which is at stake here," a senior EU diplomat told POLITICO. 

“And in view of the data, there are doubts as to whether Belgium is delivering on its promise to sent its windfall tax gains to Ukraine."

The money is hard to track, but diplomats questioning the numbers use sources such as the Kiel Institute, which pegs Belgium's total commitment to Ukraine at €3.44 billion between the start of the war and Aug. 31, 2025. To put that in context, the tax from the Russian assets totaled €1.7 billion in 2024 alone.

The Belgian government rejected the criticism by the diplomats, saying that all the tax earned from the Russian reserves held in the Euroclear bank in Brussels was "earmarked" to Kyiv. It did not directly answer a question on whether all of it had already been paid.

“The Belgian government has committed to allocating all corporate tax revenue from the interest income on Russia’s immobilized assets at Euroclear to support Ukraine,” said a Belgian official. “For 2025, this revenue is currently estimated at around €1 billion.”

The Belgian government also insisted that the money paid to Ukraine came from Belgian federal government sources beyond the tax on assets.

"In addition to the full use of the corporate tax on the windfall profits, which is fully used for military support to Ukraine, the Belgian federal government has provided since 2022 roughly just under 1 billion euros in military and other support to Ukraine," the Belgian official wrote in a statement.

Since the Russian assets are held by the Brussels-based depository Euroclear, the Belgian government levies a 25 percent corporate tax on profits generated from the interest on the holdings.

“[This] funding is entirely earmarked for Ukraine and goes toward the provision of military-related support (military hardware, training, etc.) as well as limited civilian items such as ambulances,” the Belgian official continued.

Part of the frustration among Belgium's EU allies is that this lack of transparency was meant to be resolved last year.

In 2024, several Western countries accused the Belgian government of using part of the tax revenues from assets to cover ordinary budgetary needs. In response to that criticism, the previous Belgian government pledged to transfer the tax revenues to an EU and G7 financial instrument for Ukraine.

But Belgium never delivered on that promise. When asked why it was not using the special instrument to be transparent about the funds, the Belgian government did not reply.

A second senior EU diplomat critical of Belgium had an explanation.

"The tax revenue was already part of their domestic budget, and they didn't want to give it up," the envoy said.

• Jack Smith’s Courtroom Presence: Smith made a highly publicized appearance in the January 6 case but is reportedly coordinating with DOJ leadership to drop both that case and the classified documents case citing rules against prosecuting a sitting president.
• Appointment and Reputation: Smith was portrayed as a formidable prosecutor after being appointed by Garland, yet critics highlight his previous unsuccessful prosecutions and question his selection.
• Track Record of Losses: Smith failed to secure convictions in high-profile cases such as the John Edwards campaign finance prosecution and the McDonnell bribery case, which was overturned by the Supreme Court.
• Questionable Legal Theories: His January 6 indictments relied on expansive interpretations of conspiracy, obstruction, and 18 USC 1512(c)(2), theories the Supreme Court later rejected.
• DOJ Conduct in Classified Documents Case: The investigation included jurisdictional missteps, alleged misconduct such as evidence tampering, witness intimidation, discovery withholding, and misleading courts.
• Mar-a-Lago Raid Issues: The armed search involved alleged overreach by FBI agents, including entering private areas, invoking lethal force policies, and mishandling seized documents.
• Alleged Pre-Existing Conspiracy: Communications between DOJ, National Archives, and the White House suggest early efforts to build the documents case, prompting calls for grand jury review of officials involved.
• Financial Oversight Needed: Smith’s team reportedly spent over $50 million, including protective details and contractual services, motivating demands for an audit of special counsel expenditures.

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Jack Smith lurched into a Washington courtroom in September, fully aware all eyes had turned to him.

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Surrounded by a team of federal prosecutors and guarded by a government-paid security detail, Smith, a lanky man with a scruffy beard and ill-fitting suit, stood behind the government’s table with arms folded. He slowly turned around with a partial scowl to appraise the audience—mostly reporters and D.C. residents eager to watch the restart of his January 6-related case against Donald Trump—to make sure he was noticed. He did not speak during the proceedings.

That appearance, perhaps unbeknownst to him at the time, looks like Smith’s last time in a federal courtroom as the special counsel prosecuting Trump. Citing Department of Justice rules that prohibit the prosecution of a sitting president, Smith reportedly is working with his bosses at the DOJ to figure out how to drop both the D.C. case and the classified documents in case in Florida; Smith has appealed Judge Aileen Cannon’s order dismissing the indictment based on the special counsel’s unconstitutional appointment.

The move represents another political fatality tied to Trump’s resounding victory on Tuesday. It also represents another humiliating defeat for the man the media portrayed as a steely war-crimes prosecutor plucked off a high profile international trial at the Hague by Attorney General Merrick Garland in November 2022 to finally realize a longtime DOJ dream: put Donald Trump behind bars.

Stone Cold Loser Loses Again

But the hagiography about Smith—reporters swooned over the silent-type injured triathlete, even covering his stop at a DC sandwich shop in 2023 as “breaking news”—never matched his record. The Supreme Court in 2016 unanimously vacated the bribery conviction of former Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell, a case brought by Smith when he led the DOJ’s public corruption office during the Obama administration. Following Smith’s appointment, McDonnell told Mark Levin that Smith would “rather win than get it right.”

Smith, however, usually does neither. In fact, his prosecutorial resume is a long list of courtroom losses, which makes one wonder why Garland chose him for the job. (More here).

Smith failed to win a single conviction in his prosecution of former Senator John Edwards on campaign finance charges in 2012. One DOJ watchdog group slammed Smith for using an “overly aggressive approach” in pursuing Obama’s 2008 Democratic primary rival and for relying on a “novel interpretation of campaign finance laws” to put Edwards behind bars.

It is an approach he repeated in his two unprecedented criminal indictments of Trump. The four counts in his J6-related case rely on vague conspiracy and obstruction statutes; two of the charges involve 18 USC 1512(c)(2), the post-Enron tampering with documents statute. In June, the Supreme Court reversed how the DOJ had applied that law in hundreds of January 6 cases and the court would have reached the same conclusion about Smith’s interpretation of the law if the case ever made it there.

In fact, the court this year rebuked Smith twice—by denying his highly unusual request to bypass the D.C. appellate court to immediately consider the presidential immunity question and by rendering its landmark decision in Trump v US, which largely gutted the J6 indictment.

Evidence of Misconduct in Classified Docs Case Demands Investigation

Smith’s classified documents case consisted of a hodgepodge of allegations about Trump’s possession of alleged national defense papers after he left office and accusations that he and two aides attempted to obstruct the investigation, which began in February 2022. But the DOJ’s handling of the case represents the best opportunity for a Trump DOJ to turn the tables and investigate main Justice and Special Counsel’s office for numerous offenses.

The case was tainted from the start. Although the alleged crimes occurred in Palm Beach, the DOJ conducted the entire investigation in the Trump-hating courthouse in Washington. This permitted unabashed Trump hater Chief Judge Beryl Howell to act as a rubber stamp for the DOJ’s requests including authorizing grand jury subpoenas and piercing attorney-client privilege claims between Trump and his lawyer, Evan Corcoran, under the rarely-used crime fraud exception.

Smith transferred the case to the proper jurisdiction in southern Florida at the last minute to get an indictment and then ran into a buzzsaw named Judge Aileen Cannon.

Thanks to Cannon’s fierceness—her concerns over the dirty nature of the case dates back to September 2022 when she appointed a third party to vet the items collected during the FBI’s armed raid of Mar-a-Lago the month before—the special counsel’s office was forced to disclose instances of tampering with and perhaps destroying evidence, intimidating witnesses, withholding discovery, and misleading the court. 

Court proceedings also revealed egregious misconduct related to the unprecedented armed raid of Mar-a-Lago; agents working out of the Washington and Miami FBI field offices breached the broad terms of the search warrant by ransacking the bedrooms of Melania and Barron Trump. The FBI’s plan included the bureau’s use of lethal force policy, underscoring the excessiveness of the raid, which was altogether unnecessary considering Trump and his lawyers had been cooperating with authorities for months.

Prosecutors later admitted in court that some of the records seized during the raid were not properly handled by investigators; defense attorneys claimed documents were missing.

Defense attorneys also obtained communications between the DOJ, the National Archives, and the Biden White House that demonstrated a behind-the-scenes effort to concoct a documents case as early as May 2021. A Trump DOJ should haul before a grand jury everyone from Biden’s general counsel Jonathan Su to deputy attorney general Lisa Monaco and top NARA officials involved in the scheme.

Conspiracy to defraud, anyone?

Show Us the Money

A full-blown audit into the special counsel’s expenditures should be conducted by either a Trump DOJ or a Republican Congress. Smith’s prosecutors often bragged about “the permanent, indefinite appropriation for independent counsels” allowed under 28 U.S.C. § 591 note, a claim Judge Cannon also doubted.

According to required financial reports, Smith’s team spent at least $35 million in the first 14 months of his investigation, a figure that includes additional support from main Justice. But those costs only cover the period from November 2022 through March 2024; it’s likely Smith blew through another $15 million or so over the last several months, bringing the total to over $50 million.

Expenses include a protective detail for Smith; travel expenses; and millions in unspecified “contractual services.”

Time to see who and what companies profited off the special counsel grift.

Weak Republicans in Congress undoubtedly will resist efforts to investigate and audit Smith but Trump should ignore them.

The American people—as well as Trump himself and his co-defendants—deserve a full accounting of this dirty, rogue, secretive process. And Smith and his accomplices need to be held accountable.

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• Settlement aftermath: Binance kept processing hundreds of millions through suspicious accounts despite its $4.3bn 2023 US criminal settlement promising improved compliance.
• Ongoing risks: Internal files reveal accounts with terror-financing links, improbable log-ins, and failed identity checks continued trading after the plea agreement.
• High-value flows: A Venezuelan slum resident moved $93mn through Binance between 2021 and 2025, including funds tied to Iran- and Hizbollah-linked networks.
• Monitoring gaps: Experts note regulated financial institutions would freeze accounts showing odd transfer patterns or simultaneous log-ins across continents.
• Post-settlement activity: Thirteen flagged accounts moved $1.7bn, with $144mn occurring after the November 2023 agreement, and included funds from sanctioned wallets.
• Compliance shortcomings: Binance’s enhanced due diligence efforts failed to catch repeated bank-detail changes, pass-through transfers, and irregular identity documents.
• Regulatory oversight: DOJ and Treasury monitors began oversight in May 2024, yet many suspicious transactions occurred after monitors started work.
• Political context: Trump pardoned founder Changpeng Zhao and expanded business ties with Binance, while the administration pressed a narrative contrasting Biden’s crypto stance.

Binance failed to stop hundreds of millions of dollars of cryptocurrency from flowing through suspicious accounts, even after promising to improve its conduct in a landmark $4.3bn US criminal settlement in 2023.

A Financial Times investigation of leaked internal files detailing thousands of transactions shows such accounts continued trading despite red flags including links to terror financing networks, improbable log-in patterns and failed identity checks.

One user of the world’s largest crypto exchange was the resident of a Venezuelan slum who moved $93mn through his account between 2021 and this year. Some of those funds came from a network later accused by the US of covertly moving money for Iran and Lebanon’s Hizbollah militant group.

Many of the accounts reviewed by the FT continued to trade after Binance’s plea agreement with the US despite behaviour that experts say would normally prompt freezes or investigations at a regulated financial institution.

These include moving eight- or nine-figure sums through their accounts in suspicious patterns, or log-ins that occurred on opposite sides of the world just hours apart.

Details of the transactions come after Donald Trump pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao in October for his role in wilful violations of US anti-money laundering laws. The Trump family subsequently decided to expand its business relationship with Zhao’s exchange this month.

As crypto goes mainstream, the files examined by the FT shine a spotlight on the ability and willingness of the US administration to police the goliath of the new global financial infrastructure.

Jeffrey Simser, a lawyer specialising in anti-money laundering regulations who previously spent three decades at the ministry of the attorney-general in Ontario, Canada, said the FT’s findings about the activities of Binance account holders were “very troubling allegations”.

“I cannot imagine an American bank allowing any of these things to happen without a lot of consternation,” he said.

Binance told the FT that it “maintains strict compliance controls and a zero-tolerance approach to illicit activity on our platform”, adding that it had “robust systems in place to flag and investigate suspicious transactions and take action where appropriate, including restricting accounts in line with our regulatory obligations”.

The exchange is at the forefront of an alternative financial system taking on traditional finance and is used by 300mn people to trade digital tokens and so-called stablecoins pegged to real-world currencies.

It has rebounded since paying a record $4.3bn in 2023 after pleading guilty to criminal charges related to money laundering, violations of banking law and breaching international financial sanctions.

Trump has called himself the “crypto president”, in contrast with the Biden administration’s focus on digital currency risks such as scams, criminal activity and highly volatile speculation. Since his election victory a year ago, crypto assets have soared in value.

As part of its commitments in the November 2023 plea agreement, Binance agreed to tighten compliance, transaction monitoring and sanctions controls.

The internal Binance data reviewed by the FT from 2021 to this year raises questions about the effectiveness of those changes.

The Binance files

Zhao pictured leaving the US District Court in Seattle in November 2023 © David Ryder/Getty Images

The FT obtained access to internal Binance data for a network of 13 suspicious user accounts covering a period from 2021 to this year, including internal logs, know-your-customer documentation, device and IP metadata and transaction-level histories.

They include accounts registered in the names of people from Venezuela, Brazil, Syria, Niger and China. In total, the 13 accounts were involved in transactions totalling $1.7bn, of which $144mn took place after the November 2023 agreement.

Files charting the accounts’ behaviour were verified by cross-referencing wallet flows against public blockchain data and confirming user identities against open-source records including corporate filings and social media accounts.

One of the accounts, registered in the name of a then 25-year-old Venezuelan woman in April 2022, received more than $177mn worth of crypto over the following two years.

She changed the payment bank details attached to the account 647 times in a 14-month period between January 2023 and March 2024, with 496 unique accounts, using Binance to place cash into financial institutions across the Americas. 

“That qualifies as suspicious. What you are looking for on the compliance side is something that doesn’t make any economic sense,” said Stefan Cassella, a former federal prosecutor and author of books on money-laundering and asset forfeiture.

He added: “It looks like someone is acting as a money-transmitting business.”

Binance’s plea agreement included an undertaking to “prevent individuals from accessing or using customer accounts who are not the customer registered with the Company as the account owner”.

The Venezuelan woman’s activity came after a key date in Binance’s rehabilitation.

According to the plea agreement, Binance had already implemented company-wide risk assessments for issues such as money laundering and terrorist financing from November 2022. It also said it improved its “enhanced due diligence” programme to cover, among other things, high-risk users and unusual transaction activity.

But another account in the network was registered to a 30-year-old junior bank employee whose address was in Los Picapiedras, a low-income hillside neighbourhood of Baruta, south-eastern Caracas.

Between 2022 and May this year, the account received deposits of $93mn and paid out a similar amount of cryptocurrency. 

Internal IP logs showed the account was accessed from Caracas at 3.56pm on February 24 2025 and from Osaka, Japan, at 1.30am the next day — a physically impossible sequence.

“That is exactly the kind of thing they [Binance] should be looking into,” said Jessica Feinstein, former co-head of the money laundering and transnational criminal enterprises unit at the Southern District of New York. 

It is unclear whether this glimpse of practices inside Binance represents an aberration at a company making good-faith attempts to follow the law, or indicates indifference to suspicious activity at a group previously found to show disregard for US rules.

The accounts reviewed by the FT all showed markers of suspicious account activity.

They also all had received funds, totalling $29mn in the Tether stablecoin between February 2022 and March 2023, from accounts later frozen by Israel under anti-terrorism law.

Almost all of the funds had been sent from four crypto wallets linked to Tawfiq Al-Law — a Syrian accused of moving illicit money for Hizbollah, the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen and a company tied to the Assad regime in Syria. The remainder came from a fifth wallet designated as “property of a designated terrorist organisation”.

The four Al-Law accounts were seized by Israel in May 2023, and the US Office of Foreign Assets Control imposed sanctions on Al-Law in March 2024.

Nominis, a crypto asset tracing company, said that it had seen strong evidence that crypto had become increasingly used by US-designated terror groups as a means of moving money across borders.

“Funds often move through networks that span jurisdictions, asset types and intermediaries, exploiting regulatory fragmentation to avoid detection,” Nominis said.

“Criminal/terror networks, shadow finance and weak anti-money laundering and counterterror financing controls are taken advantage of, to launder, move or shelter assets.”

Money for sausages

A giant billboard displaying tokens for Binance, Ethereum, litecoin and bitcoin in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital © Carolina Cabral/Bloomberg

Interactions in the network of 13 accounts point to a global web of dark money. One was registered in 2021 in the name of a Brazilian man charged the following year for alleged involvement in “a complex criminal organisation specialising in crimes derived from the illegal importation and sale of gold”.

The indictment also named two other members of the same Arabic-speaking family, following an investigation set off when one of them tried to cross into Venezuela carrying $50,000 in cash, telling border guards the money was to buy sausages from a Chinese acquaintance. 

The Binance account had been opened with a battered Brazilian identity card issued two decades earlier. The date of birth was illegible, the picture bore little resemblance to the selfie uploaded to the exchange, and the email address supplied was in the name of a woman. 

Following what the file said was enhanced due diligence, Binance’s customer record showed the wrong date of birth, referred to self-employed monthly income of “7,000”, without specifying the currency, and described the man’s net assets as $400,000. 

The account had received $16mn in crypto, including $5mn from three Al-Law accounts that were later frozen. It converted $4mn into hard currency withdrawn as Brazilian reals and Venezuelan bolívars up to September 2022, after which the account appears to have been dormant but remained open and accessible until this year.

Binance’s commitments

Former US Treasury secretary Janet Yellen, centre, sets out enforcement action against Binance in November 2023 © Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

In its 2023 plea agreement, Binance committed to conducting “real-time transaction-monitoring for suspicious or unlawful activity” and “periodic customer reviews for illicit activity, money and sanctions risk” as a “minimum requirement”. 

It also undertook to ensure “properly documented ongoing know your customer and due diligence reviews of existing customers”.

Institutions have discretion over how they implement compliance programmes and assess customer risk, based on their own assessments of dangers to their reputation or potential for regulatory action.

The seizure of a wallet does not itself create an obligation to review historic counterparties, lawyers said. 

But when there are other reasons for suspicion about a client, interactions with sanctioned accounts can be a factor when complying with requirements to identify potential illicit activity. 

“A financial institution does have an obligation to understand the nature of the business and the recipient, their client and the source of funds,” said Carolina Fornos, a former prosecutor and partner at the law firm Pillsbury who specialises in anti-money laundering.

There is no suggestion that Binance breached sanctions law by making or receiving transfers from people or entities after they were officially designated as financially untouchable.

“Any suspicious activity in these accounts would have triggered an investigation,” said Binance’s lawyers at Carter-Ruck.

The law firm added it would be “wholly inappropriate” to clarify whether specific accounts were investigated or subject to further action.

However, the files show many instances of irregular transactions that would be questioned at brand-name banks or other regulated institutions. 

A common automated process at financial institutions is to screen for irregular “pass-through” behaviour, such as when funds deposited into an account are transferred out again within 24 hours in a manner that is potentially suspicious, Fornos said. 

This pattern is evident in daily deposits and transfers in the account of another Venezuelan woman, who was part of the network of 13. 

Tens of millions of dollars flowed in and then out of the young woman’s account in a remarkably symmetrical way. Even after the DoJ plea agreement was signed, the account received $35mn and transferred out the same sum.

Lawyers for Binance at Carter-Ruck said “any suggestion that our client has knowingly facilitated bad actors in criminal conduct is also baseless”.

They added that none of the relevant “wallets had been tagged for terrorist financing at the time the relevant transaction occurred”, none belonged to sanctioned individuals, and that deposits and withdrawals for the wallets received “no sanctioned activity alerts” from leading blockchain analysis providers.

In November 306 family members of victims of the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7 2023 launched a legal complaint in a federal court accusing Binance of allowing Hamas and Hizbollah to move large amounts of money across its network and facilitating “money laundering on a global scale”.

Binance told the FT that the allegations were false and “grotesquely sensationalist”.

The Trump connection

Binance is a critical business partner to World Liberty Financial, a Trump family crypto venture © Brett Carlsen/Bloomberg

The US government has a central role in policing the record plea agreement with Binance, one it took on during the Biden administration and which continues under Trump, even as the broader landscape around crypto has changed.

In May 2024 the US Department of Justice and Treasury appointed two independent monitors to assess and oversee Binance’s adherence to the agreement, including ensuring that the company created adequate anti-money-laundering and sanctions compliance systems.

A significant number of the transactions reviewed by the FT occurred after the monitors began their work.

“This reporting raises concerns about how seriously the government takes its responsibilities with respect to white-collar investigations and prosecutions,” said Andrew Weissmann, a former chief of the DoJ’s fraud section and assistant US attorney.

Binance said it “is rigorously licensed and heavily regulated” and that its “clearly stated mission has always been to build a secure, transparent and trusted platform that protects users and advances the future of finance”.

At the time of Binance’s plea agreement, the Treasury said the exchange had failed to report “well over 100,000 suspicious transactions” linked to ransomware attacks, child sexual abuse, large-scale hacks, the narcotics trade and groups including al-Qaeda and Isis.

Today Binance is a critical business partner to World Liberty Financial, a Trump family crypto venture that this month announced a “massive expansion” of the use of its USD1 stablecoin on Binance and said the change “cements USD1 as a core infrastructure asset on the world’s largest exchange”. 

Promoting the news on X, the president’s son Eric Trump said the currency “is on a path to becoming among the largest stablecoins of all time”.

The Trump family’s own crypto empire has already reaped more than $1bn in pre-tax profits over the past year, according to FT reporting.

The White House told the FT that “President Trump exercised his constitutional authority by issuing a pardon for Mr Zhao, who was prosecuted by the Biden administration in their war on cryptocurrency”.

“In their desire to punish the cryptocurrency industry, the Biden administration pursued Mr Zhao despite no allegations of fraud or identifiable victims,” it added.

While Zhao remains barred from executive roles at Binance, his fellow founder and partner Yi He, with whom he has three children, was this month appointed co-chief executive of the exchange. 

Jessica Davis, a former Canadian intelligence official who now specialises in terrorist financing networks, told the FT that Trump’s pardoning of Zhao had loosened the compliance environment around cryptocurrency exchanges, giving the impression “that the US administration doesn’t think money-laundering is very serious”.

“Previously, the incentive was: keep your CEO out of jail. That is the most incentivised piece of compliance we can really offer,” she said.

“Yes, there are fines,” she added, “but part of the problem with the fines is that we’re just talking about so much money being made on these platforms that even a billion-dollar fine becomes fairly meaningless”.

Additional reporting by Kaye Wiggins in New York

• Ellison Guarantee: Larry Ellison pledged an irrevocable personal guarantee covering $40.4 billion of the equity financing and any damages claims for the Paramount Skydance offer.
• Trust Stability: Ellison agreed not to revoke the Ellison family trust or transfer its assets adversely while the transaction remains pending.
• Offer Details: Paramount Skydance bids $30 per share in cash for Warner Bros. Discovery, valuing the deal at $108.4 billion enterprise, aiming to acquire the entire company beyond the Netflix sale of studio and streaming assets.
• Bid Advantage Claim: Paramount declined to raise its price but matched Netflix’s reverse breakup fee, asserting superior value and certainty.
• RedBird Role: RedBird Capital, as investor and financier, highlighted that Ellison’s backing comes via an irrevocable trust anchored by 1.2 billion Oracle shares to reassure WBD.
• Share Movement: Warner Bros. Discovery stock gained 3%, Paramount rose over 7%, and Netflix slipped nearly 1% following the amended offer announcement.
• Shareholder Appeal: Gerry Cardinale urged WBD shareholders to decide the outcome, emphasizing that the board and CEO do not own the company.
• Regulatory Competition Concern: Paramount flagged regulatory and competitive issues with the Netflix deal, warning that combining Netflix and HBO Max would consolidate 420 million subscribers, while Netflix executives maintained confidence in regulatory approval and job preservation.

• NFLX-0.93 (-0.99%)
• WBD+0.93 (+3.37%)
• PSKY+0.56 (+4.33%)

US film producer David Ellison arrives for Paramount’s “Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts” premiere in New York City on June 5, 2023.

Angela Weiss | Afp | Getty Images

Paramount Skydance on Monday guaranteed the backing of billionaire Larry Ellison in an amended offer for Warner Bros. Discovery — a clear response to questions raised by the WBD board of directors.

“Larry Ellison has agreed to provide an irrevocable personal guarantee of $40.4 billion of the equity financing for the offer and any damages claims against Paramount,” the company said in a news release.

Paramount said Ellison, the father of Paramount CEO David Ellison, has also agreed not to revoke the Ellison family trust or adversely transfer its assets during a pending transaction. The guarantee does not replace committed funds from RedBird Capital and sovereign wealth funds, but constitutes a new layer of security for the commitments.

Paramount Skydance is offering $30 per share, all cash, for Warner Bros. Discovery in a hostile attempt that’s meant to rival an agreement with Netflix.

Last week, Warner Bros. Discovery Chairman Samuel Di Piazza told CNBC’s David Faber the board had concerns about the supposed backing of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison in the bid.

“We were not confident that one of the richest people in the world would be there at closing,” Di Piazza said at the time. “Doing a deal is great; closing a deal is better.”

WBD earlier this month agreed to sell its studio and streaming assets to Netflix in a transaction valued at roughly $83 billion on an enterprise basis. Paramount wants to buy the entirety of WBD, including its portfolio of TV networks, and says its offer comes with an enterprise value of $108.4 billion.

Paramount notably did not increase its bid on Monday, reiterating that it believes the deal is superior, though Paramount did hike its proposed reverse breakup fee to match that of Netflix’s offer.

“What we’ve done in this amended filing is we’ve cleared the brush of obfuscation around the offer,” said Gerry Cardinale, founder and managing partner of RedBird Capital Partners, on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Monday.

VIDEO10:1610:16

Paramount’s amended offer is about shareholder value and certainty, says RedBird’s Gerry Cardinale

Squawk Box

RedBird is an investor in Paramount Skydance and has also committed to financing the proposed Paramount acquisition of WBD.

Cardinale said Monday that as part of the amended filing Larry Ellison would back the bid through an irrevocable trust, which is anchored by 1.2 billion Oracle shares.

“Like we’ve done through the six bids that we’ve made, we are being responsive to what their concerns are,” Cardinale said.

Shares of Warner Bros. Discovery rose 3% in early trading Monday, while Paramount gained more than 7%. Netflix’s stock was down nearly 1%.

Paramount vs. Netflix

Paramount made three offers for WBD in the fall, which were all rejected by the company. WBD then launched a formal sale process that brought in offers from other bidders, including Netflix.

Cardinale said Paramount’s unsolicited offers likely spurred WBD to open up to a sale, putting Paramount “a little bit on the back foot.”

During Monday’s CNBC interview Cardinale, like Ellison on CNBC last week, appealed directly to WBD shareholders.

“At the end of the day ... the shareholders own this company. The board doesn’t own it. [CEO] David Zaslav doesn’t own this company,” said Cardinale. “This should be a lot more simple than it is. It’s very simple.”

Besides the question of value between the two bids, the question of regulatory approval has also been raised by Paramount as well as industry onlookers.

“The Netflix deal kills competition,” Cardinale said, adding that a combination of streaming platforms Netflix and HBO Max would create 420 million subscribers under one roof. “No wonder the constituents in the ecosystem — talent, creators, theatrical exhibitors — are losing their minds on this because they see the pricing power that they will create.”

Netflix co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters have said they are confident their deal would pass regulatory muster. Sarandos has also issued reassurances about the future of the theatrical slate for WBD under Netflix’s ownership.

At a conference earlier in December, Sarandos argued the Netflix offer for WBD’s assets would preserve jobs at a time of mounting layoffs across the industry.