This is not an esoteric question. US President Trump, between deciding who not to meet, who to insult and who to petition for a Nobel Peace Prize and who is scheduled to attend the 47th ASEAN Summit, arriving in two days' time, has found time to pardon Changpeng Zhao, founder of Binance, a crypto-currency exchange that has been accused, in the USA, of money laundering and circumventing sanctions.

The case was important because it was Zhao that the company that was prosecuted. The company had different problems although it did plead guilty to both money laundering and sanctions evasion and paid substantial fines. As part of its deal, Zhao went to jail for four months from April 2024 and the company agreed to withdraw from the US Market which led to a massive scramble for market share by other companies. 

Binance was founded in China and then shortly before China announced the banning of crypto currencies and their ecosystems, the company formally moved to Japan from where it expanded globally, having since redomiciled itself to a brass plate in The Cayman Islands. It has been described as the world's largest crypto exchange but so have others. 

Now President Trump has pardoned Zhoa (please bear with us while we laugh). The bbc reported 

"Asked about the decision to pardon Zhao on Thursday, Trump appeared not to not know who he was.

"Are you talking about the crypto person?" he asked, later saying he had granted the pardon at the "request of a lot of good people"."

But an earlier version of the story said the thing that's both very funny and very worrying: "a lot of good people told me..." If this is the basis for reversing convictions, that makes a mockery of the law and of the judicial process.

The BBC report also notes that other crypto people have been pardoned, something which is not universally popular not because of who they were and what they were convicted of but because the whole thing smells a bit fishy. 

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly1qrl9l1qo