Stalin
Well-Known Member
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- Apr 4, 2008
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who can be suprised that the big-time crook frump, has a soft spot for fellow ciminals
When Islamic State needed to move and disguise its money, it turned, US prosecutors said in 2023, to the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange: Binance. So too did al-Qaida, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas, which used the platform to help bankroll its operations in the years leading up to the 7 October attack in Israel. Binance was not accused of directly financing these groups, but prosecutors found that it knowingly allowed its exchange to function as a conduit – enabling extremist organisations to shift funds, evade scrutiny and frustrate investigations.
At the centre of it all was Binance’s founder and chief executive, Changpeng Zhao. By 2024, the self-styled “king” of crypto had fallen from grace, pleading guilty to money laundering charges and entering prison, while Binance agreed to pay a record $4.3bn penalty for its role in facilitating terrorist financing. The case was hailed as a rare victory for regulators willing to take on the industry’s biggest players – and for victims of the violence linked to those financial flows. Among them were the families of US citizens killed on 7 October, who are now suing Binance in a class-action lawsuit accusing the company of “pitching itself to terrorist organisations”.
But in late October, Donald Trump announced that he was pardoning Zhao. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, framed the decision as a corrective to what she called the Biden administration’s “war on cryptocurrency”, insisting that Zhao’s crimes had produced no “identifiable victims”.
It was a familiar refrain, dressed up for a new audience: that corruption is somehow a “victimless crime”. The claim is absurd. Terrorist organisations do not exist in a vacuum. They depend on white-collar criminals capable of building and maintaining secretive financial pipelines. The victims of bombings, shootings and mass casualty attacks are, all too often, also the victims of bankers, executives and financiers who made that violence possible.
Zhao’s pardon sent a clear signal about who stands to gain most from a Trump presidency. As those concerned with environmental collapse, economic instability and the spread of authoritarianism find themselves increasingly sidelined, white-collar criminals – Zhao among them, and Trump himself – are enjoying a political moment unlike any they have known before.
For this coterie of fraudsters and tax evaders, the past year has been a cresting wave of successes: the abandonment of seeming slam-dunk prosecutions, presidential pardons for even the most egregious crimes, and a steady hollowing out of the agencies tasked with holding them to account. Trump’s not wrong when he rails about a surge in crime. But “the crime wave,” as journalist Jacob Silverman wrote earlier this year, “is white collar”.
But why would the Trump administration choose to set aside consequences from criminals whose actions threaten the stability of the broader American economy?
Trump’s preferred tool for aiding white-collar criminals is simple: the pardon. Where previous presidents deployed that power sparingly, often at the end of their terms, Trump has wielded it promiscuously – issuing clemency even when it results in something completely anathema to his administration’s stated goals.
Take Trump’s supposed focus on combating narco-traffickers. Trump has been explicit about wanting to control the influx of narcotics and fentanyl into the US from South America – and is close to waging war on Venezuela despite the fact that it is not among the primary direct traffickers of cocaine to the US. At the same time, Trump has pardoned Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former Honduran president.
more at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/dec/21/trump-white-collar-criminals
comrade stalin
moscow
When Islamic State needed to move and disguise its money, it turned, US prosecutors said in 2023, to the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange: Binance. So too did al-Qaida, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas, which used the platform to help bankroll its operations in the years leading up to the 7 October attack in Israel. Binance was not accused of directly financing these groups, but prosecutors found that it knowingly allowed its exchange to function as a conduit – enabling extremist organisations to shift funds, evade scrutiny and frustrate investigations.
At the centre of it all was Binance’s founder and chief executive, Changpeng Zhao. By 2024, the self-styled “king” of crypto had fallen from grace, pleading guilty to money laundering charges and entering prison, while Binance agreed to pay a record $4.3bn penalty for its role in facilitating terrorist financing. The case was hailed as a rare victory for regulators willing to take on the industry’s biggest players – and for victims of the violence linked to those financial flows. Among them were the families of US citizens killed on 7 October, who are now suing Binance in a class-action lawsuit accusing the company of “pitching itself to terrorist organisations”.
But in late October, Donald Trump announced that he was pardoning Zhao. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, framed the decision as a corrective to what she called the Biden administration’s “war on cryptocurrency”, insisting that Zhao’s crimes had produced no “identifiable victims”.
It was a familiar refrain, dressed up for a new audience: that corruption is somehow a “victimless crime”. The claim is absurd. Terrorist organisations do not exist in a vacuum. They depend on white-collar criminals capable of building and maintaining secretive financial pipelines. The victims of bombings, shootings and mass casualty attacks are, all too often, also the victims of bankers, executives and financiers who made that violence possible.
Zhao’s pardon sent a clear signal about who stands to gain most from a Trump presidency. As those concerned with environmental collapse, economic instability and the spread of authoritarianism find themselves increasingly sidelined, white-collar criminals – Zhao among them, and Trump himself – are enjoying a political moment unlike any they have known before.
For this coterie of fraudsters and tax evaders, the past year has been a cresting wave of successes: the abandonment of seeming slam-dunk prosecutions, presidential pardons for even the most egregious crimes, and a steady hollowing out of the agencies tasked with holding them to account. Trump’s not wrong when he rails about a surge in crime. But “the crime wave,” as journalist Jacob Silverman wrote earlier this year, “is white collar”.
But why would the Trump administration choose to set aside consequences from criminals whose actions threaten the stability of the broader American economy?
Trump’s preferred tool for aiding white-collar criminals is simple: the pardon. Where previous presidents deployed that power sparingly, often at the end of their terms, Trump has wielded it promiscuously – issuing clemency even when it results in something completely anathema to his administration’s stated goals.
Take Trump’s supposed focus on combating narco-traffickers. Trump has been explicit about wanting to control the influx of narcotics and fentanyl into the US from South America – and is close to waging war on Venezuela despite the fact that it is not among the primary direct traffickers of cocaine to the US. At the same time, Trump has pardoned Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former Honduran president.
more at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/dec/21/trump-white-collar-criminals
comrade stalin
moscow
