What happened ?

Binance has settled the claims of the US Department of Justice, agreeing to pay a $4.3 billion fine. In addition, Binance founder and head Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty to violating securities laws, which, according to DOJ officials, facilitated money laundering on the exchange. The businessman paid a bail of 175 million dollars, the announcement of the verdict is scheduled for February 23 next year. Along with this Zhao left the post of CEO of the global platform.

Material CoinDesk

What else is known ?

4.3 billion dollars will go to pay the fines imposed by several federal agencies. Attorney General Merrick Garland responded that this is one of the largest fines for an entity in a criminal case in US history.
As part of the agreement, Binance will exit the U.S. market entirely and allow a group of third-party U.S. monitors to oversee its operations for the next five years. Because Zhao pleaded guilty under the agreement, he waived his right to appeal any sentence within 18 months.

In addition to the DOJ, the exchange settled claims by two of its divisions - the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) - as well as the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
Zhao himself is allowed to reside in the UAE pending sentencing, but must return to the States two weeks before the hearing.
Zhao will be replaced as CEO by Richard Tan, formerly in charge of the exchange's regional markets outside the US.
Amid the news, users withdrew $1.01 billion from Binance overnight, and the exchange token BNB fell 10% to $234.4.
Matrixport analyst Markus Thielen believes that this outcome will allow Binance to maintain its leading position in the market for the next two to three years. In addition, other exchanges, following Binance, will strengthen their compliance controls, which could accelerate the approval of bitcoin-based spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the United States. The co-founder of F2Pool under the nickname @bitfish1 has a similar opinion on ETFs.

The top manager of the US crypto exchange Coinbase
Conor Grogan analyzed data on Binance's reserves and savings and concluded that it would be able to pay the fine without having to sell any cryptocurrencies. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong believes that the case against Binance will be a catalyst for creating a clear regulatory framework for cryptocurrency companies to operate in the United States.