Tether's Dirty Money Dilemma: Stablecoin Giant Caught Up in Global Financial Crimes
Tether, the company behind USDT, the world's most widely used dollar-pegged stablecoin, has become a magnet for criminal finance. The company promised sophisticated customer screening but its own records raise concerns about how rigorous this process was.
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) obtained documents showing hundreds of millions of dollars in USDT purchases involving companies registered in offshore jurisdictions like the Cayman Islands and British Virgin Islands. Some of these companies later became connected to serious financial-crime investigations, including allegations of North Korean cryptocurrency laundering.
The transactions do not prove Tether knowingly facilitated criminal activity but raise questions about what the company knew or should have known about its customers' businesses and sources of wealth.