The exchange said it left Russia in 2023, but law enforcement documents show it answered Moscow’s request for a donor’s identity and transaction history.
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Posted August 18, 2026 at 6:31 am EST.
Binance supplied Russian investigators with a client’s identity documents and transaction history in 2025, and prosecutors folded the records into terrorism financing charges over crypto donations to Ukrainian fundraising campaigns, Reuters reported Monday, citing law enforcement documents. The exchange had said in 2023 that it fully exited Russia.
Russia’s Investigative Committee alleged in an Oct. 13, 2025 statement that Yuri Belenkiy, a 49-year-old IT specialist detained that September, sent more than $700 between January 2023 and March 2024 to the Ukrainian military and an associated group known at different times as the Azov Brigade and the Azov Regiment, which Moscow designates a terrorist organization. Investigators requested his transaction history and received two replies from an address Binance’s own site directs Russian and Belarusian law enforcement to use. The data file confirmed Belenkiy initiated the transfer and included his date of birth, address, phone number, passport number and copies of his Russian passport and Bulgarian residency permit. He is in a Russian jail awaiting trial.
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The disclosure cuts against Binance’s own account of its footprint. The exchange said in 2023 that operating in Russia was incompatible with its compliance strategy, sold the business, and kept no revenue-sharing arrangement or buyback option. Mike Bystrov, founder of Stellar Consulting, which advises on crypto regulation, told Reuters that Binance was under no obligation to supply the records having quit the country, and may have had an obligation not to under EU law. If Belenkiy was registered as an EU resident, GDPR would bar disclosure absent a court order and stringent conditions, and Russia carries no EU adequacy designation for personal data.
Binance disputes that reading, and CEO Richard Teng addressed the report in a thread Monday. Operating globally means engaging with authorities across all jurisdictions, he said, including places where the exchange has no commercial presence: Binance does not operate in the United States, he noted, yet it responds to requests from U.S. law enforcement. Responding to a lawful request is the responsibility of every regulated financial institution, Teng added, and “should not be taken to mean that financial institutions are partial towards any government.”
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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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