Binance founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao said that his business relationship with President Donald Trump’s family has been “misconstrued” in the wake of his pardon.
“There’s no business relationships whatsoever,” Zhao told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin Thursday in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
The former Binance CEO served four months in prison after pleading guilty in 2023 to charges he enabled money laundering during his time leading the company. Zhao was released in September 2024.
Trump’s pardon in October 2025 drew attention to Binance’s ties to World Liberty Financial, a crypto company run by the president’s family.
The connection stems from a $2 billion investment in March 2025 by Abu Dhabi’s state-owned firm MGX into Binance. MGX paid using USD1, a stablecoin created by World Liberty Financial.
Zhao stepped down as Binance’s CEO in 2023 as part of the plea deal and $4.3 billion settlement with the Department of Justice. He remains a major shareholder.
“MGX is the investor. They choose USD1,” Zhao told CNBC. “My request to them was they pay us in crypto. I don’t want to deal with banks, really.
“Many people misconstrued that,” he added.
Zhao told CNBC the company has since converted that investment out of USD1 in portions over time.
“Stablecoin is just a currency for payment. Just because I accepted that, it doesn’t mean I invested in the issuer of that,” he said.
The Wall Street Journal reported following the pardon that in addition to MGX’s investment using USD1, Binance also helped build the technology behind the stablecoin, citing sources familiar with the matter.
“A lot of people say that he wasn’t guilty of anything,” Trump said, when asked later why he issued the order. “And so I gave him a pardon at the request of a lot of very good people.”
NBC News reported the week of Trump’s pardon that Binance had recently hired lobbyist Charles McDowell’s firm, Checkmate Government Relations. McDowell is a friend of Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son.
Checkmate disclosed that it was paid $450,000 for work that included lobbying the White House and Treasury Department for “executive relief” and “financial services policy issues relating to digital assets and cryptocurrency.”
“There is a lot of media saying that there is some deal in place to get me the pardon,” Zhao told CNBC at Davos. “As far as I know, that does not exist at all.”
CNBC has reached out to World Liberty Financial for comment.
Zhao told CNBC at Davos that he has still not spoken directly with Trump.
“The closest that I got to him was today when he was doing the Board of Peace session,” Zhao said. “I was in the audience, about 30 to 40 feet away from him.”
In a CBS “60 Minutes” interview in November, Trump affirmed that he did not know Zhao.
“I have no idea who he is,” Trump said. “I was told that he was a victim, just like I was and just like many other people, of a vicious, horrible group of people in the Biden administration.”
CNBC’s Jacqueline Corba contributed to this story.
