Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, founder and former CEO of Binance, confirmed in a podcast that has formally requested a presidential forgiveness of Donald Trump, less than a year after completing a four -month sentence in a federal prison in the United States.
Zhao shared the update of an episode of the Podcast of Farohk Radio, stating that his legal team presented the request two weeks before.
“I have lawyers who request. They only presented us after Bloomberg’s article and the Wall Street Journal article,” he said, referring to the March coverage that reported that he was looking for a forgiveness while participating in cryptographic commercial agreements involving the allies of the Trump family. “And I thought, well, if they are writing this article, we could also officially apply.”
At that time, Zhao publicly rejected parts of those stories, calling them inaccurate and denied active trade negotiations involving Binance Us
Zhao was sentenced in April 2024 after declaring himself guilty the year before not maintaining an effective program for money laundering in Binance, at the time when the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by negotiation volume.
Together with his prison mandate, Zhao paid a fine of $ 50 million. Binance himself paid $ 4.3 billion in what became one of the largest corporate agreements in the history of the United States. It was released in September last year.
Trump has already forgiven other high profile figures in the cryptographic space. These include the founder of the Silk Route, Ross Ulbricht and the Bitmex co -founders, since their administration brought a more friendly regulatory environment with cryptomonitres.
During the podcast, CZ also revealed that it was not invested in the official Memecoin of Donald Trump Trump.
