Tether fires back at inaccurate reports, claims allegations of falsified documents as “misleading”

• Reports from Wall Street Journal suggested Tether was using shell companies to make new bank accounts.
• WSJ report further claimed that Bitfinex moved over $1 billion into now defunct Crypto Capital, which acted as a shadow bank for Tether.
• Tether Holdings co-owner Stephen Moore also claimed that he suggested against the potential fraudulent method of opening bank accounts.

The biggest stablecoin issuer Tether fell victim to allegations of potential fraud on Friday following the release of reports from the Wall Street Journal. Tether, soon after, released a statement addressing the allegations calling them inaccurate, misleading and an unfair attack on the company.

WSJ claims fraud

As per the report published on Friday, the Wall Street Journal alleged that Tether was using falsified documents and shell companies in order to access bank accounts.

These claims by the newspaper are based on an email viewed by WSJ belonging to one of Tether Holdings Ltd.'s owners Stephen Moore. The email read,

"[Moore was trying to] circumvent the banking system by providing fake sales invoices and contracts for each deposit and withdrawal. I would not want to argue any of the above in a potential fraud/money laundering case."

According to Moore, the use of false invoices was becoming too risky, and for the same reason, he suggested dropping these methods of opening bank accounts. The report also went on to target the sister company of Tether, which owns Bitfinex.

The cryptocurrency exchange was alleged to have moved over $1 billion into a company known as Crypto Capital Corporation.

The now-defunct company was said to have used shell companies to open bank accounts to transmit money for crypto companies. However, following the allegations of money laundering against Crypto Capital in 2018, the funds it held were seized by authorities, and Bitfinex lost nearly $850 million.

Bitfinex made no comment addressing these allegations at the time of writing, however, Tether certainly did.

Tether says not true

In a statement issued following the report, Tether stated that the allegations made by Wall Street Journal were stale and "wholly inaccurate and misleading". Adding to the same, the statement read,

"Bitfinex and Tether have world-class compliance programs and adhere to applicable Anti-Money Laundering, Know Your Customer, and Counter-Terrorist Financing legal requirements… and routinely and voluntarily assist the United States Department of Justice and other law enforcement organizations across the world in preventing money laundering, terrorism, and other crimes by bad actors."

Tether called its position as the biggest stablecoin in the crypto space as evidence of support from the market and that such unfair attacks would not distract them from their ambitions and responsibilities towards the users.