There is a simple way to test whether a company really changes hands: look at who walks away and who stays. At Binance the founder walked away from the executive suite. He stayed the owner. And at the end of 2025 his life partner was appointed co-chief executive.
The condition
21 November 2023, the same day as the guilty plea. In the press release of the American Department of Justice it sits in a single subordinate clause: Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty “and has resigned as CEO of Binance”.
No announcement, no transition period. That same day the successor was already standing there.
What Binance itself said about it later is sharper than the press release: according to a spokesperson in September 2024, under the terms of the deal Zhao is “prohibited from any present or future involvement in operating or managing the business”. No current or future involvement whatsoever in running the company.
That is where the tension of this whole chapter sits. Because not being allowed to lead is something other than no longer owning.
The regulator becomes the boss
His successor was a striking choice: Richard Teng, a Singaporean who had spent his entire career on the other side of the table.
He started at the Monetary Authority of Singapore as director of corporate finance. After that he became chief regulatory officer of the Singapore exchange. And then director of the financial regulator of Abu Dhabi. Only in August 2021 did he come in at Binance, first as head of the Singapore arm, later responsible for the regional markets.
In other words: the company that had pleaded guilty to failing to comply with anti-money-laundering rules put a former regulator at the top. Zhao publicly called him “a highly qualified leader” with three decades of experience.
Teng went straight for compliance: more licences, better monitoring, better relations with regulators. In his first big interview, two weeks after taking the job, there was only one category of questions he refused to answer. The ones about governance: where is the head office, who audits the books, who is the owner. His answer: that is being considered.
Two monitors in the building
The settlement also brought supervision from the inside. Two independent monitors, with different principals and different terms.
The Department of Justice imposed a monitor for three years. The financial intelligence unit FinCEN imposed one for five years — part of the largest settlement in the history of the American Treasury Department.
In September 2025 it emerged that Binance was negotiating with the Department of Justice about ending that monitorship early. Whether that worked, nobody knows: in April 2026 an American senator had to ask Justice and the Treasury in writing what the status actually was. Both monitorships were still standing on paper, but had, in the words of one report, gone quiet.
That in itself is a finding. The strictest supervisory mechanism in crypto history cannot be tracked from the outside a year and a half later.
Four months
Zhao himself was sentenced on 30 April 2024. The prosecution had demanded three years. The judge came out at four months.
At the end of May he reported to a low-security prison in Southern California. On 27 September 2024 he walked free.
And on 21 October 2025 President Trump signed a full and unconditional pardon. The sentence had already been served by then; the pardon wiped out the conviction. Two days later it was made public, with a statement from the White House that the previous administration’s war on crypto was over.
Zhao on X, that same day: “Deeply grateful for today’s pardon.”
Two billion, in the right coin
Around that pardon hung a question that would not go away.
In March 2025 MGX, an investment vehicle from Abu Dhabi, announced an investment of two billion dollars in Binance. In May Eric Trump confirmed that the transaction was being settled in USD1 — the stablecoin of World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s crypto project.
MGX said it had chosen that coin because of its compliance track record. There was just one problem with the order of events: USD1 did not yet exist at the moment of the announcement. The coin only went live two weeks later.
Teng denied any connection: the choice for USD1 was MGX’s, “we didn’t partake in that decision”. Trump said in a television interview that he did not know Zhao. And Zhao maintained that his relationship with the family had been misrepresented.
In Congress they were not satisfied with that. Two senators sent a letter, a resolution followed, and twenty-eight members of Congress condemned the pardon.
The usage of USD1 transaction between MGX as a strategic investor into Binance, that was decided by MGX. We didn't partake in that decision.Richard Teng, November 2025, asked about the connection between the investment and the pardon.
December 2025
On 3 December 2025, at its own conference in Dubai, Binance announced the biggest change at the top since the founder left.
Yi He was appointed co-CEO, alongside Richard Teng.
She is a co-founder of Binance, with the company since 2017, responsible for marketing, product and community. She is also — and this has never been confirmed by Binance itself, though it has by her in an earlier interview and by several major outlets — the long-time life partner of Changpeng Zhao. They have children together.
The press release said she would continue to lead product and growth and that Teng brings his experience from regulated markets. A formal division of responsibilities has never been published.
Line it up. The founder is not allowed to run the company. The founder owns the company. The founder’s partner is now co-chief executive.
Ninety percent
How much does he actually own? That has never been confirmed by Binance. Forbes came out in March 2026 with an estimate based on court records from the investigation: around ninety percent.
Zhao himself puts it like this, in June 2026:
He added something that completes the picture: Binance.US has one chief executive, Binance.com has two, “they almost never talk to each other”. He says he sits on the board of the American arm himself. Whether he sits on the board of the global Binance — nobody knows. The composition of that board has never been published. Not by the company, not by a regulator.
And that is precisely the point. Formally the power has been handed over: a new executive team, a board with independent members (forced by the derivatives regulator), two monitors. In fact the owner is the same, his partner is at the top, and the board is invisible.
You do not have to assume a conspiracy to see that this is an unusual construction.
I'm still the single largest shareholder of Binance, but I don't run Binance.Changpeng Zhao, June 2026.
And then came Europe
Meanwhile the company simply kept growing. When the founder left, Binance had some hundred and fifty million users. In December 2025 it reported almost three hundred million. It remained by far the largest exchange in the world, with almost forty percent of all spot volume on centralised exchanges.
And then it got stuck on one licence.
Here we have to correct a misunderstanding you come across everywhere, including in earlier summaries: Binance did not leave Europe voluntarily on 1 July 2026. It failed to get the MiCA licence in place before the end of the transition period. On 24 June 2026 the company withdrew its Greek application. A day later users in France, Italy, Poland and Spain, among others, got an email.
As of 1 July 2026: no more new spot and margin orders, no deposits, no new sign-ups, no staking. Withdrawals are still possible. Binance added that funds are safe and that it still expects a licence “in the coming months”.
Why it did not work out, no regulator has explained publicly. But the question every European regulator has to ask on a licence application is whether the owners and directors are fit and proper. And the answer to the question of who the owner is can be found in parts one through three of this series.
And the bill keeps running
It would have been a neat story: company pays record fine, cleans up its act, keeps growing. That is not how it ends.
In February 2026 The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal published investigations stating that money was still flowing through Binance to entities with ties to Iran — according to that reporting some $1.7 billion. Internal investigators who raised the alarm about it were also said to have been fired in 2025.
Binance denied it with a striking formulation: the company had in fact detected and reported that suspicious activity, and that was “evidence that our controls work, not the opposite”.
An American senator opened an investigation into it on 24 February 2026. Two months later that same senator asked the question this chapter began with: are those monitors actually still running?
And elsewhere the meter kept running too. Canada imposed a fine of more than six million Canadian dollars in May 2024. India followed in June 2024. In Nigeria a civil claim of $81.5 billion is being negotiated outside the courtroom. In France the public prosecutor expanded its money-laundering investigation in 2025.
On the other side: the big American civil case brought by the securities regulator — the case most of the material in this series comes from — was dropped for good on 29 May 2025.
The question that remains
Who runs Binance? Formally: two co-CEOs and a board whose composition is not public.
Who owns Binance? Almost certainly still the man who pleaded guilty in 2023, for around ninety percent according to the best public estimate.
And that is the difference this whole series rests on. At a listed company you can answer those questions with an annual report. At an exchange with no head office, no published board and no audited accounts, all you can do is look at what regulators write down when something goes wrong.
That is why the order on our site is always the same. First the licence, then the costs, then the rest. A licence means that someone has had to answer those questions — and that a regulator found the answers good enough.
What is settled and what is not
Settled: the guilty plea and the 4.3 billion, the resignation, the four months in prison, the pardon of 21 October 2025, the appointment of Yi He on 3 December 2025, the fines in Canada and India, and the fact that Binance did not get the MiCA licence.
Not settled unconfirmed: the exact ownership percentage (the ninety percent is a Forbes estimate based on court records, not a confirmed figure), the composition of the board, the status of both monitors as of August 2026, and the precise reason why the European licence was not granted — no regulator has explained it.
The reporting on Iran from February 2026 is journalistic investigation, not an enforcement decision; Binance disputes the account. The Congressional investigation is ongoing.
And one thing belongs here in fairness: Richard Teng has not been accused of anything. He came in after the period the cases are about, and his entire career before that played out on the regulators’ side.
Sources
The DOJ press release of 21 November 2023 and the FinCEN decision (monitors of three and five years); the CFTC consent order that forced a board with independent members; the pardon of 21 October 2025; the press release on the appointment of Yi He (3 December 2025); the withdrawal of the SEC case (29 May 2025); the FINTRAC fine and the Indian FIU order. Plus reporting by Bloomberg, CoinDesk, CNBC, Fortune, Forbes, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and the letters from the American Congress. Current as of 1 August 2026.