Changpeng Zhao, founder and former CEO of crypto exchange Binance, is hoping to get a pardon from President Donald Trump after being released from prison late last year. Zhao, better known by his initials CZ, formally applied for a pardon from the Trump administration two weeks ago, he said on the Farokh Radio podcast on Monday.
“We only submitted after the Bloomberg article and the Wall Street Journal article came out,” CZ said on the podcast, referring to two articles from March that reported he was hoping to receive a pardon in exchange for going into business with Trump. “And I was like well if they are writing this article we might as well officially apply.”
At the time, Zhao denied the Wall Street Journal’s claims that he was discussing a business deal of any kind, but did not rule out the idea of a pardon. “No felon would mind a pardon, especially being the only one in U.S. history who was ever sentenced to prison for a single BSA charge,” he wrote on X. BSA refers to the Bank Secrecy Act, which requires financial institutions to assist the government in preventing money-laundering.
Zhao’s decision to seek the pardon also roughly coincides with an announcement by the president’s son Eric Trump last week that his family’s crypto firm, World Liberty Financial (WLF), had entered a joint venture with Binance and UAE-based venture firm MGX. The deal calls for MGX to use stablecoins issued by WLF to invest $2 billion in Binance. While details of the deal remain unclear, WLF could net as much as $80 million over the course of a year through yield off underlying reserves, according to Fortune’s estimates.
In 2023, Zhao pleaded guilty to failing to implement proper anti-money-laundering practices at Binance and resigned as CEO. Binance also pleaded guilty to related charges and was forced to pay over $4 billion in fines. As a result of the suit, Zhao was sentenced to four months in prison, which he served from April to September last year.
If Trump elects to grant Zhao a pardon, it would hardly be the first time he has exercised his clemency power. The President has pardoned hundreds of people in his first 100 days in office, including multiple crypto-related criminals, and the January 6 rioters who trashed the Capitol.
Trump pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the operator of dark web drug trafficking site Silk Road, within his first few days in office, terminating Ulbricht's life sentence after he had spent 12 years in jail. In addition, he pardoned three founders of crypto exchange BitMEX as well as another executive at the company after pleading guilty to violating anti-money-laundering laws.
When asked about his thoughts on a second Trump presidency, Zhao said, “This will be a good guy for our industry and also for any sort of people who have a criminal charge.”
