French investigators said Tuesday they conducted a judicial investigation into money laundering, tax fraud and other allegations of Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, which denied the charges.
The Economic and Financial Crime Department of the Paris Attorney’s Office (JUNALCO) said in a statement that the investigation included money laundering related to drug trafficking.
Narco said the investigation is studying the crimes committed by France between 2019 and 2024, but also involving all EU countries.
“Binance completely denies these allegations and will vigorously deal with any allegations,” a Binance spokesman said in an emailed statement.
Binance founder and former CEO Changpeng Zhao was sentenced to four months in prison last year after violating U.S. law against money laundering. Binance agreed to pay a fine of US$4.3 billion (about Rs 372.24 crore).
After a year of investigation, U.S. prosecutors said Grace had adopted a “wild west” model to welcome criminals and had not reported more than 100,000 suspicious transactions with designated terrorist organizations.
A Binance spokesman said on Tuesday that Binance has made progress in its anti-money laundering (AML) and compliance, including implementing AML and Your Knowledge Customer Inspection Standards (KYC) from global regulators and improving employee training.
The prosecutor’s office said the French investigation began with complaints from users who accused them of losing money after investing through the platform because the information they said was miscommunicated to them.
Users also complained that the platform has already traded without the necessary approval.
In June 2023, the Paris Attorney’s Office said that the office had begun a preliminary investigation into illegal canvassing and “increasing money laundering.”
At the time, Binance founder Zhao said in an article on X that the news was “FUD”, which was used by the Crypto circle to refute what was considered negative.
Binance also faces litigation and investigations from several countries.
This month, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed another case against Binance and Zhao. The lawsuit involves investors who accused second-hand bonds of illegally selling unregistered tokens that lost most of their value.
In December, Australia’s corporate regulator said it had sued Binance’s local derivatives business and alleged that its retail customers were denied consumer protection measures after being misclassified as wholesale customers.
Regulators have long warned about the role of cryptocurrencies in crime. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global institution responsible for addressing money laundering and terrorist financing, had previously warned that cryptocurrency assets “had potential to become a safe haven for financial transactions between criminals and terrorists.”
The cryptocurrency industry suffered a major setback in 2022, when a series of bankruptcies by a series of cryptocurrency companies exposed widespread fraud and misconduct and caused huge losses to millions of investors. But the price of cryptocurrencies has reached new highs in recent months as U.S. President Donald Trump takes a pro-Crypto stance.
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