More than 300 American families accuse the exchange of facilitating financial movements connected to the terrorist group.
According to Bloomberg, on November 24 Binance and its co-founder Changpeng Zhao were hit with a lawsuit accusing them of building a system that, for six years, allegedly enabled cryptocurrency transactions tied to Hamas.
The suit, filed in federal court in North Dakota, represents yet another civil action against the platform. This time, the accusations come from more than 300 families of U.S. citizens killed or injured in attacks attributed to Hamas.
The complaint fits into a broader context of similar legal actions, including the cases Raanan et al. v. Binance Holdings Limited and Rosenberg et al. v. Binance Holdings Ltd., already underway in the Southern District of New York.
According to statements in the legal filing, Binance’s corporate structure and compliance practices allegedly allowed users linked to terrorist organizations to transfer funds through the exchange.
The families claim that the platform lacked adequate controls from 2017 until at least 2023. Among the issues highlighted are:
- weak customer verification systems;
- use of omnibus wallets that mixed assets from different users;
- internal communication practices that limited oversight.
According to the plaintiffs, these factors made it extremely difficult to determine who was actually operating on the platform.
“Binance not only knowingly provided financial services to Hamas; it actively tried to shield its Hamas customers and their funds from scrutiny by U.S. regulators or law enforcement—a practice that continues to this day,” reads the document filed by attorneys from Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP.
The offshore network
The legal filing opens with allegations about how Binance was structured and operated during the period in question. The complaint claims the exchange functioned through a network of offshore entities allegedly controlled by Changpeng Zhao, without a fixed headquarters, and relied on shared custody and short-term record-keeping.
According to the lawsuit, these structural choices created an environment in which identifying individual users or tracing specific transfers became difficult, even as activity on the platform grew.
The filing also argues that Zhao’s decisions kept certain transactions hidden from U.S. authorities and that he instructed employees to mask customer locations in order to mislead regulators.
Binance’s legal background
Binance’s legal troubles intensified in 2023, when the company agreed to a $4.3 billion settlement with U.S. authorities over anti-money-laundering and sanctions violations.
Zhao pleaded guilty to failing to maintain an effective AML program and stepped down as CEO as part of the agreement. He served a short federal sentence before receiving a presidential pardon from President Donald Trump last month.
