US court rejects Hamas victims’ claims against Binance for sanctions compliance failures

1 June 2026

The DC District Court has dismissed claims against the operators of the Binance cryptocurrency exchange brought by victims of the October 7, 2023 attacks, for knowingly providing assistance to Hamas — Atzili v Islamic Republic of Iran, Civil Action No. 1:24-cv-03365.

The victims brought claims under the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), arguing that Binance had knowingly provided substantial assistance to Hamas by failing to implement adequate sanctions controls. Binance had received reports of Hamas-associated transactions from a third-party provider in 2019 but did not file suspicious activity reports with FinCEN. The victims relied on Binance’s $4.3 billion DOJ settlement in 2023 for AML and sanctions violations and its CEO’s guilty plea for failing to maintain an effective AML programme as evidence that it was on notice of its sanctions control failures.

The court said it had jurisdiction to hear the claim because the sanctions compliance-related decisions had been taken in Washington DC. It dismissed all the claims because allowing Hamas-linked accounts to operate on a generally available platform did not meet the JASTA threshold of “knowingly providing substantial assistance” to Hamas. Liability under JASTA would have required a direct financial relationship with Hamas or conduct directed at furthering its activities, rather than a general failure to enforce sanctions controls.