UAE Police Detain Two Binance Employees at Airports in Fraud Inquiry; All Three Staff Questioned Are Released
UAE Police Detain Two Binance Employees at Airports in Fraud Inquiry; All Three Staff Questioned Are Released #
UAE authorities detained two Binance employees at Emirati airports in recent weeks as part of a fraud investigation focused on funds flowing through the cryptocurrency exchange, The New York Times reported. A third Binance official who oversees the company’s Dubai subsidiary was questioned separately at a police station in July. All three have since been released.
One of the detained workers, described as a mid-level Binance employee, was stopped at Sharjah airport and held overnight at a local police station before being freed. A second employee was apprehended at a different Emirati airport around the same time, according to people familiar with the inquiries cited by outlets reporting on the Times story.
The investigation centers on financial crime allegedly involving activity on the platform, though people familiar with the matter say the probe is focused primarily on the exchange’s customers rather than the company or its staff. Investigators flagged the employees partly because they are listed on a corporate bank account Binance maintains in the UAE, which processes customer deposits and withdrawals. A person familiar with the situation told the Times that police questioned some staff members for that reason alone.
A Binance spokesperson said the employees were asked to provide standard statements as part of routine inquiries into third-party fund flows and were never considered targets of the investigation. The company said all staff who gave statements were “promptly cleared and released.”
Binance has separately approached UAE government officials this month seeking assistance and raised concerns about employee safety in the country, according to people briefed on those communications. Dubai authorities and the UAE Ministry of Interior did not respond to requests for comment.
The detentions come as Binance has expanded its presence in the Emirates. Abu Dhabi’s Financial Services Regulatory Authority granted the exchange a three-part licence covering trading, clearing, and custody in December, the first such comprehensive approval under that regime for any crypto exchange, with operations going live on January 5. The UAE’s state-backed investment fund MGX also invested $2 billion in Binance in March 2025, the company’s first-ever external investment.
The incident recalls an earlier case in Nigeria, where Binance compliance executive Tigran Gambaryan was detained in 2024 and held for months before charges were dropped under pressure from US officials. Binance entered a guilty plea in a Seattle federal court in 2023 for breaches of US anti-money-laundering laws, resulting in a combined $4.3 billion in forfeitures and fines and the departure of founder Changpeng Zhao, who later served a four-month prison sentence.
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