Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, has quietly changed how it cooperates with law enforcement in many countries around the world, frustrating investigators who say the company has made it harder to find scammers and combat money laundering.
The new policy is a big shift for Binance. The company had tried to clean up its act after years of legal problems, working directly with investigators to freeze suspicious accounts and share information about customers making fishy transactions.
But in April of last year, Binance enacted a policy requiring law enforcement officials to route certain requests to foreign government agencies, a time-consuming process governed by international treaties. That rule, along with an exodus of a group of senior compliance employees, has stymied some investigations in Europe and raised concerns in the United States, The New York Times found.
Binance moves billions of dollars in digital coins every day, leading a booming global industry that has been embraced by the Trump administration. Last year, President Trump eased federal scrutiny on crypto companies at the same time that his family’s crypto start-up forged a business relationship with Binance.
The company said that it had not slowed its cooperation with law enforcement, and that the change was meant to ensure that Binance followed regulations and privacy laws when handling customers’ personal data. There is no indication that the change was related to the Trump administration’s easing of regulations.
But investigators said the policy had created new obstacles for fighting financial crime.
Police officers from five European countries who attended a law enforcement conference in the Netherlands last month said they struggled to get information from Binance, except in cases involving child sexual abuse materials, terrorism or an imminent threat to life. A senior European law enforcement official said that most requests had been channeled to the government of the United Arab Emirates, where Binance is regulated, dramatically slowing response times.
In the United States, law enforcement is largely exempt from the requirement to submit requests to foreign governments, said three people with knowledge of the policy. But in some cases, Binance asks state prosecutors to route their requests through other countries, which has hindered at least two investigations this year, according to people familiar with the cases as well as messages reviewed by The Times.
Alona Katz, an assistant district attorney in Brooklyn, told The Times that she generally had found Binance to be responsive, sometimes providing information within hours. But she said she was unable to obtain account records from some Binance users based in the United Arab Emirates.
In fast-moving cases, when criminals move funds between accounts in minutes or even seconds, speed is of the essence to recover stolen funds, she said. “How fast you get your records determines the outcome of your case,” she said. “It’s everything.”
“For the sake of victims of crypto theft, it is important to have the timely and forthcoming cooperation from these massive, and highly profitable, cryptocurrency corporations,” Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, said in a statement.
Binance offers a gateway for ordinary people to buy cryptocurrency. It has also struggled to root out crime. The company paid $4.3 billion in penalties to the U.S. government after pleading guilty in 2023 to compliance violations that allowed hackers, swindlers and other criminals to move money. The company’s billionaire founder, Changpeng Zhao, spent four months in federal prison.
Under its plea deal with the Justice Department, Binance agreed to take steps to prevent financial crime. While most crypto transactions are recorded on a public ledger, funds that enter an exchange such as Binance are impossible to trace, unless the company turns over information about an account.
Even before the deal was finalized, Binance began cooperating enthusiastically with law enforcement, including turning over the identities of account holders, according to officials in Europe and the United States. The company built a staff of hundreds of compliance officers, many of them veterans of U.S. and European law enforcement agencies. The police could often get information about accounts far faster from Binance than they could from banks.
Since Mr. Trump was inaugurated in early 2025, his administration has taken a much friendlier approach to the crypto industry than its predecessor did. Binance has forged business ties with World Liberty Financial, the crypto company founded by the president and his sons. The Emirati venture firm MGX used a World Liberty cryptocurrency to buy a stake in Binance, a major boost to the Trump start-up. And in a memo in April 2025, Todd Blanche, now the acting attorney general, said the administration would stop targeting exchanges such as Binance and focus on prosecuting criminals who abused the platforms. Mr. Trump also pardoned Mr. Zhao.
Late last year, Binance fired or suspended several of its top compliance employees. The officials had sounded alarms about $1.7 billion that they said had flowed from Binance accounts to Iranian entities. Binance has disputed the employees’ findings and said that they were not disciplined for raising compliance concerns. Several other senior compliance officials left around the same time.
That shake-up meant some investigators and prosecutors lost their main points of contact at Binance, according to people familiar with the matter. And the exit of so many senior members of the compliance staff has led to confusion within the company about how to deal with law enforcement requests.
The rules that Binance introduced in April 2025 are complex and so far have had more severe consequences for investigators in Europe.
There, Binance now often requires law enforcement officials who want information about accounts outside their home country — a German prosecutor seeking to freeze the account of someone in Asia, for example — to follow procedures laid out in mutual legal assistance treaties, agreements that govern how countries share information in law enforcement investigations. (The same agreements apply to banks.)
Noah Perlman, the chief compliance officer for Binance, said that “in some cross-border cases, foreign law enforcement may be directed to the appropriate formal legal process.”
Still, he said, the company had increased its cooperation with law enforcement “while navigating the increasing complexity of governments as they seek to regulate crypto and data protection.” When law enforcement agencies seek information about accounts in their own countries, Binance works with them directly. The company has gone “far beyond” its legal obligation, Mr. Perlman said, and remains committed to fulfilling the requirements of its 2023 settlement with the United States.
But concerns have persisted. In December, Binance gained a license to operate in Abu Dhabi. Since then, certain information requests flow through the Emirati government, raising concerns among current and former law enforcement officials. They argue that the Emiratis have a conflict of interest, because the investment firm MGX is funded by Abu Dhabi royals.
Mr. Perlman said there was no conflict of interest. A spokeswoman for Binance’s regulator in Abu Dhabi said it was committed to protecting market integrity and countering financial crime. MGX did not respond to a request for comment.
This spring, U.S. investigators began to worry that the company’s rules would become more cumbersome, mirroring what was taking place in Europe.
A Binance compliance official informed the Justice Department that starting on June 8, the company would extend its treaty requirement to cover a wider range of American law enforcement requests, three people familiar with the matter said. Around the same time, top officials in the Justice Department sent an email to prosecutors warning that Binance was about to dial back its cooperation, according to The Information.
The company’s top executives did not move forward with that plan, the people said. Ms. Katz, the Brooklyn prosecutor, said that if it were to happen, it would be “devastating for our victims.”
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