Binance Founder CZ Confirms He Filed for Trump Pardon After Prison Term
Francisco Rodriguez | Edited by Parikshit Mishra May 8, 2025, 7:59 AM
Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, the founder and former CEO of Binance, confirmed on a podcast that he has formally submitted a request for clemency to President Donald Trump – less than a year after serving a four-month sentence in a US federal prison.
Zhao shared the information on an episode of Farohk Radio’s podcast, saying his legal team filed the application two weeks ago.
“I have lawyers who filed this. We only did it after the Bloomberg article came out and the Wall Street Journal article came out,” he said, referring to coverage in March that reported on his clemency bid related to cryptocurrency cases involving Trump relatives. “And I thought, well, if they’re writing this article, we might as well formally file the request.”
At the time, Zhao publicly denied some of the news, calling it inaccurate, and denied that there were any active business negotiations with Binance US.
Zhao was convicted in April 2024 after pleading guilty a year earlier to failing to effectively implement an anti-money laundering program at Binance, then the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume.
In addition to his prison sentence, Zhao paid a $50 million fine. Binance itself paid $4.3 billion, one of the largest corporate settlements in U.S. history. He was released last September.
Trump has already pardoned other prominent figures in the crypto space, including Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht and the co-founders of BitMEX, as his administration has created a more favorable environment for cryptocurrency regulation.
During the podcast, CZ also revealed that he has not invested in Donald Trump’s official meme coin TRUMP. Earlier this week, Zhao revealed that he was advising Kyrgyzstan on using BTC and BNB as seed cryptocurrencies for a potential National Crypto Reserve.
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