Binance’s long-running compliance rebuild is showing new signs of strain as departures hit teams that monitor financial crime and sanctions — and Chief Compliance Officer Noah Perlman is reportedly weighing his own exit, Bloomberg says.
Perlman, who was hired in January 2023 to lead a post‑plea overhaul of Binance’s sanctions enforcement and anti‑money‑laundering (AML) systems, is “discussing future departure matters” with management and could leave as soon as this year or next, the report said. Several staffers in units responsible for financial‑crime surveillance and sanctions checks have already left, according to people familiar with the situation.
The personnel turbulence comes against the backdrop of Binance’s $4.3 billion guilty plea in the U.S., one of the largest corporate penalties in American history. Under that deal, Binance and founder Changpeng Zhao acknowledged violations of the Bank Secrecy Act and sanctions rules; the package included $2.5 billion in forfeiture and a $1.8 billion criminal fine. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said the settlement “sends an unmistakable message” to the crypto industry. Regulators have since collected more than $32 billion in penalties from crypto firms, with Binance’s settlement among the largest individual amounts.
Binance pushed back on Bloomberg’s account, saying Perlman “remains focused on his current work,” that no departure timeline has been set and no successor has been chosen. The exchange points to heavy investment in compliance since 2023 — claiming a 30% increase in compliance headcount and a 96% reduction in “direct exposure to illicit activity” between January 2023 and June 2025. Perlman has characterized those gains as proof the company’s systems now “anticipate” threats rather than merely reacting to them.
But independent reporting has challenged that upbeat picture. A Financial Times investigation found evidence that suspicious accounts with links to terror financing and other red flags continued to move hundreds of millions of dollars through the platform even after the 2023 plea agreement and promised monitoring upgrades. Those findings raise fresh doubts about whether Binance’s revamped compliance apparatus is functioning at the level regulators demand.
The dispute over Binance’s compliance progress plays out amid broader efforts by the exchange to reduce U.S. oversight. The Wall Street Journal has reported that Binance executives have lobbied Washington to remove an independent U.S. monitor installed after the plea deal to oversee AML controls. Meanwhile, coverage by crypto.news has charted how regulatory pressure has reshaped Binance’s global footprint and governance — from Zhao’s resignation and guilty plea to scrutiny of the U.S. affiliate’s custody practices. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has accused the exchange of allowing funds to flow to terrorists and cybercriminals while ignoring basic AML obligations.
Binance’s own metrics paint a sharp improvement on paper: sanctions‑related exposure reportedly fell from 0.284% in January 2024 to 0.009% in July 2025 (a 96.8% drop), the firm says. It also cites processing over 71,000 law‑enforcement requests and facilitating about $131 million in confiscations linked to illicit activity.
Whether those numbers hold up under scrutiny — and whether the compliance program can sustain progress amid continued staff churn and the potential exit of the executive who was hired to lead the clean‑up — will be key signals for regulators, institutional partners and markets evaluating Binance’s future risk profile.
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