Tether, the issuer of the recently de-pegged stablecoin USDT, has finally addressed some operational decisions-related issues.
According to information in documents released by the New York Attorney General (NYAG), the stablecoin issuer purportedly deactivated as many as 29 accounts belonging to prominent crypto players two years ago. The majority of the accounts on the list were terminated for various reasons.
Tether responded that it does “not want to comment on any individual relationship, but everyone did pass the strict compliance checks at onboarding and ongoing monitoring required by Tether’s compliance policies.”
Some of these accounts belonged to entities such as the crypto trading platform MoonPay, the embattled crypto lending company BlockFi, the crypto investment firm CMS Holdings, and the now-defunct crypto hedge fund Galois Capital.
Notably, the NYAG’s investigation concluded in February 2021, but it was discovered that some documents date back to June of that year. Their user IDs have already been concealed.
NYAG’s Tether Saga
The New York Attorney General’s Office collected these documents during its investigation into Tether and its sibling company Bitfinex for misappropriating $850 million.
During this time, iFinex, the parent company of both entities, requested a 30-day extension to deliver the critical financial documents to NYAG a few days before the original deadline. In addition to suspending trading operations in New York, the parties involved ultimately settled for $18.5 million as a penalty.
The media, including Coinbase, then approached the NYAG with a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request for public disclosure of their first quarterly report, but Tether objected to the move. Tether asserted that it was attempting to safeguard its customers’ sensitive data, which could be “exploited by malicious actors.”
To demonstrate its commitment to transparency and openness, NYAG eventually granted media outlets access to the documents, and the deactivation of the accounts of numerous crypto companies is one of the issues that have been uncovered so far.
