Brazilian law enforcement agencies have requested the assistance of Bahamian authorities to investigate fraudulent transactions to Deltec Bank and Trust, the recently announced banking partner of controversial stable coin Tether (USDT). This was reported by a major Brazilian media O Globo on Nov. 6.
According to the report, the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office in São Paulo is on the trail of Paulo Vieira de Souza, a previous chief of the São Paulo road infrastructure organization DERSA. De Souza is at present being arraigned for bribery in the notorious Odebrecht case, described by the U.S. government as “the biggest foreign bribery case ever.”
As clarified by O Globo, the head of DERSA supposedly transferred an aggregate of 25 million Swiss francs (around $25 million) to the accounts of Panama-based off-shore organization Nantes Group, which were clearly operated by a private Swiss bank Bordier and Cie. De Souza himself showed up as the owner of those accounts.
In any case, the report states, investigators presume that Nantes Group was not the last destination for the laundered fund. In February 2017, the sum was apparently moved to accounts in Deltec Bank and Trust, with home office in Bahamian capital Nassau — the same bank that as of late cooperated with the group behind the dubious USD-backed stablecoin Tether.
The report further stated that Brazilian prosecutors are currently awaiting a response from Bahamas authorities to learn if the fund in question actually found its way to Deltec Bank and Trust. The daily paper additionally takes note of that Brazil has effectively worked with the Bahamas in money laundering cases before this issue arose.
Tether declared its new deal with Deltec Bank and Trust Ltd. soon after purportedly going parting ways with Puerto Rico’s Noble Bank International. Noble Bank had likewise purportedly held accounts for major crypto trade Bitfinex, which shares the same CEO with Tether.
Tether has been rumored not to have in its reserves the equivalent volume of USD as it has claimed in the past bringing to question the veracity of it being pegged to the dollar.
The stablecoin has been reputed to come up short on the vital store to back the majority of its 1.7 billion circulating tokens of 1:1 with the U.S. dollar. However the authenticity of the coin has not been officially disputed.
The fact that the firm has failed to make open its books to third-party audit has continued to fuel speculations about its ability to back the token with equal volume of USD.
Announcing its association with the Bahamas-based bank a week ago, Tether expressed that it had passed the bank’s expected diligence processes. According to stablecoin group, the procedure demonstrated their capacity to keep up the USD-Tether peg continually.
