Two Binance employees were detained at UAE airports as police probed financial crimes. The exchange said the staff were cleared after routine inquiries. The detentions follow a July report on Binance's law enforcement policy.
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Two Binance employees were detained in the United Arab Emirates in recent weeks as police investigated possible financial crimes tied to the exchange, the New York Times reported Thursday, citing four people familiar with the matter. Both were stopped at airports in the Emirates, according to two of those people.
It was not immediately clear what UAE authorities were investigating, the Times said. Binance told the Times that a small number of staff were asked to give statements as part of "routine inquiries into third-party fund flows." None were targets of the probe, the company said, and all were cleared and released.
Binance has spent years making the UAE its regulatory home, the Times reported. Its licensed entities operate inside Abu Dhabi Global Market. Roughly 1,000 employees are based in the country. Abu Dhabi state investor MGX put $2 billion into the exchange in March 2025, the largest single investment in a crypto company and the largest ever settled in stablecoin.
The episode follows a July report, again from the Times, that Binance changed its policy in April 2025 to route most foreign law enforcement requests through the UAE government and mutual legal assistance treaties rather than answering them directly. Police officials from five European countries said at a June conference in the Netherlands that the shift slowed investigations into scams and money laundering.
Staff detentions are not new territory for the exchange, the Times noted. Two executives were held in Nigeria in February 2024 during a government crackdown, including financial crime compliance head Tigran Gambaryan, who spent months in custody before being released. Binance, which marked its ninth anniversary in July with 323 million registered users, has been rebuilding its regulatory standing since founder Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty to U.S. anti-money-laundering violations in 2023.
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