Exclusive: Senator presses DOJ and Treasury over status of Binance monitors after $1.7 billion in Iran-linked crypto flows

Congress continues to probe Iran’s use of Binance. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) sent out letters on Friday asking for details on the status of two monitors assigned to oversee the world’s largest crypto exchange and its compliance operations.

“I am writing with concern over mounting allegations of dangerously lax anti-money laundering prevention by Binance,” said Blumenthal, in the letters sent to the Justice Department and the U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

Spokespeople for the DOJ and FinCEN did not immediately return requests for comment.

As part of a 2023 settlement with Binance over compliance shortcomings, the U.S. government installed two monitors, who separately report to the DOJ and FinCEN, to ensure the exchange put in place appropriate measures to overhaul its compliance program. The monitorships, which began in 2024, were part of a larger plea deal in which Binance paid a $4.3 billion fine related to its failure to impose proper money-laundering and sanctions oversight.

Binance has since sought to project an image of corporate responsibility, but recent reports over Iranian crypto flows have prompted Blumenthal—along with other Senate Democrats—to probe the crypto exchange and the Trump administration over whether the exchange’s internal operations match its public rhetoric. 

Amid the public back-and-forth, Binance’s two monitors, whose roles include flagging any misconduct, have remained quiet.

Frances McLeod, the Justice Department’s chosen monitor and a founding partner at the consulting firm Forensic Risk Alliance, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Neither did Sharon Cohen Levin, FinCEN’s monitor and a partner at the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell.

Monitorship on pause?

Blumenthal’s questioning comes after multiple outlets reported that Binance fired internal investigators who had warned top executives that over $1 billion had flowed through the exchange to Iran-linked wallets. Binance has said that the firings of the investigators were unrelated to their findings on Iranian flows, and that the crypto exchange maintains a rigorous compliance program. Spokespeople for the crypto exchange did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Blumenthal’s inquiry into the status of its monitors.

The Senator’s letters also follow a 2025 report from Reuters that stated that the Justice Department had paused its corporate monitorships as part of an informal review. In March 2025, a judge granted the DOJ’s request to end the monitorship of Glencore, the international mining company caught up in a foreign bribery scheme. Later that year, the DOJ also scrapped the requirement for the airplane manufacturer Boeing to have its own independent monitor.

Critics of monitorships, or when governments ask independent third parties to oversee a company that’s run afoul of the law, argue that they’re costly burdens for corporations or just not effective. 

In 2013, a U.S. court imposed an antitrust monitor onto Apple after ruling that the tech giant engaged in a price-fixing conspiracy. Other marquee companies to receive monitors include Deutsche Bank, Volkswagen, and Walmart. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com