WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, who created the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange and served prison time after failing to stop criminals from using the platform to move money connected to child sex abuse, drug trafficking and terrorism.

Zhao had asked Trump for a pardon previously.

He has deep ties to World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture that the Republican president and his sons Eric and Donald Jr. launched in September.

Trump’s most recent financial disclosure report reveals he made more than $57 million last year from World Liberty Financial, which has launched USD1, a stablecoin pegged at a 1-to-1 ratio to the U.S. dollar.

World Liberty Financial also recently announced that an investment fund in the United Arab Emirates would be using $2 billion worth of USD1 to purchase a stake in Binance. Zhao also has publicly said that he had asked Trump for a pardon that could nullify his conviction.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement Thursday that the Biden administration prosecuted Zhao out of a “desire to punish the cryptocurrency industry.” She said there were “no allegations of fraud or identifiable victims,” though Zhao had pleaded guilty in November to one count of failing to maintain an anti-money-laundering program.

“I failed here,” Zhao told the court last year. “I deeply regret my failure, and I am sorry.”

The report lays out allegations he abused five of his children and stepchildren, citing police and court records, a collection of over 50 emails, text messages, personal notes and letters, as well as interviews with social workers and family members.

Errol Musk has at least nine children and stepchildren, the eldest of whom is billionaire Elon Musk.

He has been married to three women. The allegations largely come from his children and former stepchildren with his third wife, Heide-Mari Bezuidenhout.

In 1993, Errol Musk’s then 4-year-old stepdaughter told her aunt that he had touched her. In another incident a decade later, that stepdaughter said she found him sniffing her underwear.

When the stepdaughter was in her 20s, she said she had a child with Errol Musk.

That same stepdaughter later filed for an interim protection order against Errol Musk in South Africa, where she accused him of abusing two of the daughters and stepson he shared with Bezuidenhout. A letter a relative sent to Elon Musk around 2010 included the same allegations.

In 2023, the then 5-year-old son Errol Musk shares with his former stepdaughter (same stepdaughter mentioned above) reportedly told family that his father had groped his buttocks.

Errol Musk, who has not been convicted of any crimes related to the allegations or investigations, strongly denied the accusations in a response to questions from the Times.

He called the reports “false and nonsense in the extreme,” alleging they were fabricated by family members who were “putting the children up to say false things” in order to manipulate Elon Musk for financial support.

While Elon Musk rarely comments on his father in public, he has not hidden the fact they are estranged.

He told Walter Isaacson, the author of his 2023 biography, that he does not speak to his father. In a 2017 interview with Rolling Stone, he claimed his father had done “almost every evil thing you could possibly think of.”