Tether responds to questions from former US SEC officials: the company does not operate in the US

05/12 02:38

Tether Chief Technology Officer Paolo Ardoino made the following response to former US Securities and Exchange Commission Internet enforcement officer John Reed Stark's series of questions on Tether on Twitter: "1. Tether is not a U.S. company and does not operate in the U.S., nor solicit U.S users. Our core markets are the unbanked people in emerging markets and developing countries, billions of people left out from the financial system just because they're too poor to be of interest of the banking industry. 2. Tether not only verifies all primary market customers but also conducts enhanced due diligence on all it’s customers including the UBOs, directors, authorized signatories etc. 3. As well all customers are risk rated and periodically checked as part of our enhanced due diligence processes. These practices are in line with bank caliber AML programs. 4. We automatically, on an ongoing basis, monitor all customers for potential Sanctions and adverse media matches using World-Check. 5. Our transfers to and from our customers are screened with Chainalysis for links to potentially high risk wallets 6. Our compliance team helps secondary market users who have sent funds to contract or black hole wallets to recover their funds 7. Historically, Tether has frozen hundreds of millions of USDt working with law enforcement worldwide. Our response time and diligence in working with law enforcement and regulators is more efficient than any bank in the world. That's due to transparency of blockchain technology and our commitment to protect our users and company. 8. Tether has worked with law enforcement worldwide on over 200 cases, including several cases with US law enforcement. 9. Tether has already returned > USDt 100MM to victims to hacked individuals, exchanges and networks. While investigations reach to an end, more will be unlocked and returned to legitimate owners. 10. Tether Limited is registered with FinCEN, files suspicious activity reports (SAR) with FinCEN and is subject to Title 31 Examinations. The Tether Group also files SARs with the BVI FIA. 11. Tether regularly works with the FBI and DOJ on various cases. 12. Tether is a patron of INHOPE which seeks to combat CSAM. 13. Tether presented at the 9th Virtual Currencies Conference hosted by Europol earlier this month and participates at this conference annually. 14. Tether meets with regulators and law makers worldwide to discuss approaches to foster sustainable growth. 15. Tether is doing a fine job to protect its users, taking risk management extremely seriously, accruing additional reserves (excess equity) on top of its 100% reserves. That's widely better than many banks that recently have failed their customers all around the world (SVB, FRB, ...). 16. While the world (especially but not limited to MSM) has been obsessed with Tether for the last many years, several companies, public and private, among which some notable U.S. ones, failed their investors, taking insane amounts of risks. Risks that are far from Tether risk management policies. 17. We truly appreciate the interest in our company. The amount of scrutiny that Tether has been subject to, since 2014 helped our team to become stronger, better and more efficient. 18. Yet sometimes, this obsession with Tether could lead who is in charge of policing the market, to not properly check what's happening in its own backyard, as proven by recent history."