The New York Times reported that two Binance staffers were stopped at Emirati airports, in the country the exchange has spent years turning into its regulatory home.
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Posted August 21, 2026 at 6:06 am EST.
Two Binance employees were detained in the United Arab Emirates in recent weeks as police looked into possible financial crimes tied to the exchange, the ****New York Times reported Thursday, citing four people familiar with the matter. Both were stopped at airports in the Emirates, according to two of those people.
It was not immediately clear what UAE authorities were investigating, the Times said. Binance told the Times that a small number of staff were asked to give statements as part of “routine inquiries into third-party fund flows.” None were targets of the probe, the company said, and all were cleared and released.
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Binance has spent years making the UAE its regulatory base: its licensed entities sit inside Abu Dhabi Global Market, roughly 1,000 of its employees are in the country, and Abu Dhabi state investor MGX put $2 billion into the exchange in March 2025, the largest single investment in a crypto company and the largest ever settled in stablecoin.
The episode also follows a July report, again from the Times, that Binance changed its policy in April 2025 to route most foreign law enforcement requests through the UAE government and mutual legal assistance treaties rather than answering them directly. Police officials from five European countries reportedly said at a June conference in the Netherlands that the shift slowed investigations into scams and money laundering.
Staff detentions are not new territory for the exchange. Two executives were held in Nigeria in February 2024 during a government crackdown, including financial crime compliance head Tigran Gambaryan, who spent months in custody before being released. Binance, which marked its ninth anniversary in July with 323 million registered users, has been rebuilding its regulatory standing since founder Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty to U.S. anti-money-laundering violations in 2023.
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AI-assisted content: This article was produced with the assistance of AI tools and was reviewed, edited, and fact-checked by a member of the Unchained editorial team before publication.
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