Binance — $968,618,202 OFAC Penalty (2023)

OFAC settled with Binance for violations of multiple sanctions programs involving Iran, Syria, Cuba, and the Crimea region.

What happened

Binance was penalized by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in 2023. The case is instructive for any organization handling cross-border payments, crypto transactions, or customer onboarding where sanctioned parties may be present.

Violations cited

• Facilitating trades between US users and sanctioned jurisdictions
• Inadequate KYC and sanctions screening controls
• Failure to act on internal warnings about sanctioned users
• Allowing VPN-masked users from sanctioned regions

Lessons for compliance teams

• Real-time screening of all wallet addresses against SDN list
• IP geolocation and VPN detection on every session
• Ongoing monitoring of existing customers (not just at onboarding)
• Automated freeze-and-report workflow for matches

How this could have been prevented

In nearly every OFAC penalty case, the root cause is the same: inadequate or outdated sanctions screening. The sanctioned parties were on the SDN list at the time — they simply weren't caught. Real-time screening against the current SDN list, with proper name-matching and fuzzy logic, would have flagged most of these transactions before they completed.