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Binance Founder Changpeng Zhao Gets 4 Months In Prison
US prosecutors had initially recommended a three year jail term.
A federal judge in the United States has handed out a four month prison sentence to Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (known as “C.Z.”). Prosecutors had recommended a three year term after Zhao pleaded guilty to violating the Bank Secrecy Act back in November 2023.
The DOJ accused Zhao of turning a blind eye to criminal activity on the crypto exchange and ignoring its legal obligations “in the pursuit of profit”. U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen also noted that Zhao’s “willful failures allowed money to flow to terrorists, cybercriminals, and child abusers through its platform”.
The U.S. government accused Binance of refusing to comply with sanctions and failing to report transactions related to drugs and child sexual abuse. Prosecutors claimed that Zhao had told Binance employees it was “better to ask for forgiveness than permission” while saying that if Binance had obeyed the law, it wouldn’t be “as big as we are today”.
To avoid a longer jail term, Binance agreed to forfeit $2.5 billion and settle a $1.8 billion fine. Zhao also paid $50 million from his own fortune as part of the settlement.
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The Binance founder’s sentence is much shorter than the 25 years recently given to crypto entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried of FTX. Zhao played a prominent role in Bankman-Fried’s downfall after Tweeting in November 2022 that his company would liquidate all FTX holdings. The posts not only destroyed FTX but rocked the wider crypto community, likely attracting attention from the U.S. government.
With Zhao heading to prison, DOJ lawyer Kevin Mosley remarked: “This wasn’t a mistake — it wasn’t a regulatory oops […] breaking U.S. law was not incidental to his plan to make as much money as possible. Violating the law was integral to that endeavor”.
News
Visa’s Return To Syria Starts With A Test And A Bank In Lebanon
Foreign visitors will be the first users to benefit, but whether Syria’s own banks and cardholders follow is still an open question.
Visa is returning to Syria. Its first live international card transaction in the country was a test rather than a launch, and the milestone event ran through a Lebanese bank.
The acquirer (the bank on the merchant’s side of a card payment) was Fransabank Lebanon, with Paymera as the other named partner. Nadim Moujaes, who heads a Fransabank Group subsidiary, describes the test as both the culmination of “longstanding efforts to link Syria back to international payment networks” and “the first step in a larger path”.
Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa makes the first electronic payment in Syria using a @Visa card at a store in Damascus, following the lifting of US sanctions on Syria. pic.twitter.com/lpAN7nQ6Fc
— Tech Magazine (@TechMGZN) August 27, 2026
“We are excited to have successfully tested live transactions today as we plan to enable international visitors to use their Visa cards while in Syria,” says Leila Serhan, Visa’s senior vice president and group country manager for the North Africa, Levant and Pakistan region. Although a significant first step, that plan doesn’t come with a hard date for when a visitor’s card will work normally.
Mohammed Safwat Raslan, governor of the Central Bank of Syria, says the test paves the way for international card acceptance in Syria and that maintaining strong compliance, risk management and operational controls will remain essential. Serhan likewise stresses that Visa has worked within applicable legal, regulatory and compliance requirements. For a test transaction, it seems there was a great deal of attention paid to the rules, with the entire operation being carefully managed.
Also Read: Lebanon’s 5G Era Begins With 150 Stations And A $1M Budget
The test is the latest step in a sequence that began in December 2025, when Visa announced a strategic roadmap to support Syria’s integration into the global digital economy. In February 2026 it hosted its first industry gathering of banks, ecosystem partners and policymakers in Damascus and, the same month, signed an agreement with Syria’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology in San Francisco.
Michel Kattouah, Paymera’s CEO, called the test “the return of international card acceptance,” but while that’s positive news, there’s no word yet on when a Syrian bank will issue a Visa card to a Syrian customer.
Visa’s Return To Syria Starts With A Test And A Bank In Lebanon
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