Report disclosed U.S. subpoenas to hedge funds in Binance inquiry

The Washington Post reported on January 7, 2023 that federal prosecutors had subpoenaed U.S. investment firms for records concerning their communications with Binance. According to two people who had each reviewed a subpoena, the requests came from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Washington as part of a broader examination of the cryptocurrency exchange’s compliance with U.S. anti-money-laundering rules.

The development mattered because it extended the reported inquiry beyond Binance itself and into the exchange’s relationships with institutional market participants. It did not, however, establish that Binance, its executives or the subpoena recipients had been charged with or found responsible for an offense.

What the January 7 report established

The subpoenas had reportedly been sent during the preceding months. January 7 was therefore the disclosure date, not a verified issuance date for every demand. The recipients were not identified, and the underlying subpoenas were not published. The strongest surviving contemporaneous evidence is the Post’s statement that two people separately reviewed such documents.

The reported requests sought communications between investment firms and Binance. That scope suggested prosecutors were examining how the offshore exchange interacted with U.S.-connected professional traders, but the documents’ complete wording, legal authority, return dates and requested time periods remained confidential.

A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment. Binance chief strategy officer Patrick Hillmann also declined to discuss the status of any U.S. investigation. He said Binance communicated regularly with regulators and acknowledged that the company’s compliance approach had shortcomings during its early expansion, while asserting that it had subsequently invested heavily in compliance and law-enforcement cooperation. Those were attributable company statements, not independent verification of the effectiveness of Binance’s controls.

An inquiry, not an accusation

A subpoena is a compulsory request for evidence. It can be used to obtain records from witnesses or counterparties without accusing the recipient of misconduct. On January 7, the reported subpoenas showed investigative activity; they did not reveal what conclusions prosecutors had reached or whether any charge would follow.

That distinction was especially important after FTX’s November 2022 collapse intensified public concern about centralized exchanges. Binance maintained that its principal offshore platform did not serve U.S. users and therefore did not require U.S. money-services registration. The January 7 record did not resolve that jurisdictional position. It showed that prosecutors were seeking evidence potentially relevant to Binance’s U.S. connections.

Reuters had reported on December 12, 2022 that Justice Department offices were considering possible charges, a negotiated resolution or closing the long-running inquiry without action. Binance disputed aspects of that report. The January 7 subpoenas were consistent with an active investigation, but they did not establish which of those possible outcomes prosecutors favored.

Evidence limits on the event date

No public court filing or Justice Department announcement on January 7 confirmed the subpoenas. Contemporaneous follow-up reports from crypto publications relied on the Post rather than independently obtaining the documents. The central claim should therefore remain attributed to the Post and its confidential sources.

No cryptocurrency price, trading-volume, reserve or fund-flow claim is used in this reconstruction. The available evidence does not support attributing an event-day market movement to the subpoena report, and continuous crypto trading lacks a single official closing auction.

Later documentary context

On November 21, 2023, Binance and founder Changpeng Zhao entered guilty pleas in the Western District of Washington, and the Justice Department published the associated case records. Those later documents authoritatively confirm the broader federal investigation and its Seattle venue. They do not independently disclose or reproduce the hedge-fund subpoenas reported on January 7, so they clarify the institutional record without converting the earlier confidential-source report into a public primary document.