Binance and CZ successfully defend against lawsuits brought by dozens of victims of terrorist attacks, case dismissed

BlockBeats News, March 9th. According to Reuters, a U.S. federal judge on Friday dismissed a civil lawsuit that attempted to hold responsible the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance and its founder CZ, alleging that their trading activities helped terrorist organizations carry out dozens of related attacks worldwide.

U.S. District Judge Jeannette Vargas in Manhattan, New York, stated that 535 plaintiffs (including victims and their families) failed to adequately plead their case to prove that the defendants "knowingly furthered these terrorist attacks, participated in the attacks, or ensured the attacks' success through their actions." The plaintiffs claimed that these attacks occurred between 2017 and 2024 and were attributed to Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs), including Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran's Revolutionary Guard, Islamic State, Kataib Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and al Qaeda.

The plaintiffs sought to hold Binance and CZ accountable, alleging that they transferred hundreds of millions of dollars in cryptocurrency to FTOs and engaged in billions of dollars worth of transactions with Iranian users, indirectly benefiting agents who carried out the attacks.

Judge Vargas pointed out that while Binance and CZ may have a general understanding of the exchange's role in terrorist financing, their only relationship with these Foreign Terrorist Organizations is that "they or their affiliates have accounts on the Binance platform and engaged in transactions on an arm's length basis."