Breaking: Tether Investigation Reveals Use of Fraudulent Documents and Obscured Identities to Open Bank Accounts

cryptonews.com:

Amid struggles to maintain access to the global banking system, the companies behind Singapore-based USDT stablecoin issuer Tether used a mixture of fraudulent documents, obscured identities and shell companies, according to a new bombshell report by the Wall Street Journal.

USDT’s value is pegged to the US dollar and backed 1:1 with US dollar/liquid equivalents, Tether claims. USDT is the largest stablecoin by market capitalization, with $71.124 billion tokens currently in circulation.

Tether’s trading volumes are typically in the region of Bitcoin and Ether combined. According to CoinMarketCap, USDT saw $37.239 billion in trading volumes in the past 24 hours, versus Bitcoin’s $25.65 billion and Ether’s $9.7 billion.

According to the WSJ, Tether’s use of unconventional tactics to maintain access to the global banking system began in 2017, when Wells Fargo & Co stopped processing transactions from several of the crypto firm’s Taiwanese bank accounts. Tether said in a lawsuit against the bank at the time that this was “an existential threat to their business”.

The documents cited by the Wall Street Journal revealed that the companies behind Tether opened new accounts in Taiwan which were held in trust by Hylab Technology Ltd. executive Chrise Lee, though the accounts were opened under the name Hylab Holdings Ltd. Meanwhile, a separate account was opened in Turkey under a company called Deniz Royal Dis Ticaret, an account that has since been accused by the US Justice Department of being used to launder money for a terrorist group.

Bitfinex, a sister company of Tether, reportedly also moved over $1 billion to a now-bankrupt Panama-based company called Crypto Capital Corp, which was known for opening shell companies to open bank