In late November, Protos started demystifying the mysterious ties of the bankrupt and fraud-riddled cryptocurrency trade FTX to “a small financial institution in rural Washington,” often known as Farmington State Financial institution. Provided that it has solely 3 workers and is among the smallest banks in the complete United States, Protos famous that “the truth that [this bank] one way or the other finds itself embroiled within the largest cryptocurrency fraud in historical past is puzzling, disconcerting, and completely misplaced, to say the least.”
Whereas the Protos piece sheds some gentle on Farmington State Financial institution and its latest transformation into FBH Corp. and Moonstone Financial institution, there may be extra to the story. Regardless of being a small, rural financial institution, Farmington/Moonstone, since a minimum of 1995, has had ties to a number of the most covert and prison offshore monetary networks of the trendy period, with connections to intelligence-linked monetary fraudsters of appreciable notoriety.
On this Limitless Hangout investigation, we choose up the place Protos left off and start lifting the curtain behind the FTX monetary labyrinth in an effort to piece collectively the networks behind the frilly crypto Ponzi scheme. That is crucial work, because the FTX chapter proceedings have been oddly manuevered so to keep away from revealing who apart from Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced CEO and face of FTX, had management of the trade and its subsidiaries. The community behind Farmington/Moonstone, the topic of this piece, is the primary of many threads tied to FTX that we hope to drag on within the coming weeks and months.
Archie Chan Finds Farmington
Farmington, a sleepy rural city in Washington state, noticed its as soon as promising financial fortunes turn to mud in the course of the Nice Despair of the Thirties. The Nice Despair had additionally crushed the primary iteration of Farmington State Financial institution, initially based in 1887, and a brand new financial institution of the identical identify was created in Could 1929. A lot of Farmington State Financial institution’s historical past is hardly noteworthy. Becoming a member of the financial institution in 1973 was C. Wayne Wexler, who served because the financial institution’s president for over a decade. All through the Seventies, the financial institution held round $1.5 million in deposits, which grew modestly in the course of the Eighties to round $3.5 million.
Round 1995, Farmington, for causes nonetheless unknown, attracted the eye of a British citizen residing in Hong Kong named Archie Chan. In accordance with a 2010 interview given by Farmington’s then-president, John Widman, Chan purchased the financial institution in 1995 “when he was in search of a chartered Washington financial institution which may grow to be a platform for worldwide banking.” Although this by no means got here to move, Chan’s connections recommend that his pursuits within the small, rural financial institution might have been manifold.
Chan acquired Farmington by means of a holding firm registered within the British Virgin Islands (BVI) known as Farmington Finance Company. The lawyer who aided him in organising the company construction for the brand new Farmington group was David Ok.Y. Tang, who – amongst different issues – is a member of the Council on Overseas Relations (CFR). Tang, whose careers in legislation and enterprise spans Seattle, Hong Kong and Beijing, additionally served a stint as chairman of the Federal Reserve Financial institution of San Francisco—the central financial institution department that has technical authorized oversight of Farmington. In accordance with a unique Protos investigation, this similar part of the Federal Reserve system “took over regulatory responsibility for [Farmington/Moonstone] earlier this 12 months, however appears to have glossed over Moonstone’s for-profit international pursuits.”
Although it remained beneath BVI jurisdiction, annual stories from Farmington State Financial institution reveal that Chan’s Farmington Finance Company maintained its workplaces within the Jardine Home in Hong Kong. That property is owned by the pursuits of Jardine Matheson Holdings. That firm is the successor to Jardine Matheson & Co, one of many largest international buying and selling corporations within the Far East for a lot of the 19th century which was extensively concerned in entrenching British political and financial affect in Hong Kong. It additionally performed a key function within the opium commerce. Notably, Archie Chan has claimed to be “a member of one of many oldest and most distinguished Hong Kong households,” suggesting a possible familial hyperlink to the ability networks of early colonial Hong Kong, the place Jardine Matheson was notably distinguished. Later, Chan’s Farmington Finance Company relocated to St. George’s Home, additionally in Hong Kong.
Additional investigation into Chan reveals that he was, till comparatively not too long ago, the chief director of Superb Solar Enterprises. Superb Solar Enterprises is the primary firm of its father or mother group, the Superb Solar Group. The latter started as a textile concern in Hong Kong within the mid-Nineteen Sixties, later increasing into the fields of finance, actual property and different ventures in the course of the Eighties. It now boasts property holdings in Hong Kong, China, Singapore, Canada and the USA.
Chan’s affiliation with the Superb Solar enterprise advanced has been long-running. In accordance with SEC filings, he turned the corporate secretary of Superb Solar Enterprises Restricted in February 2005, after which joined the company board as a director in August of that very same 12 months. Nonetheless, over 20 years earlier than this, Chan had been appearing because the group’s major “enterprise marketing consultant”, a place that required him handle the assorted partnerships and subsidiaries that made up the fledgling empire’s huge attain. Paperwork submitted by Superb Solar to the SEC state that he would act as a director in varied joint-ventures the place Superb Solar managed 50% of extra of firm inventory. Chan, in different phrases, was Superb Solar’s chief enterprise agent on the time that he bought Farmington State Financial institution.
Superb Solar Enterprises is generally held by Superb Solar Holdings Restricted, adopted by Advancetex Holdings. Different shareholders embrace members of the Yeung household, another executives and the Texas-based Dimensional Fund Advisors LP. Each Superb Solar Holdings Restricted and Advancetex have been registered on the deal with 263 Most important Road in Street City, the capitol metropolis of the British Virgin Islands (BVI). That is location of CCS Trustees Restricted, a company providers agency that handles the authorized registration for enterprise in search of to arrange holding corporations or subsidiaries in offshore tax havens like BVI. CCS Trustees itself appears to have a give attention to Hong Kong-oriented enterprise, and even maintains a subsidiary known as Cayman-Hong Kong Company Companies Ltd. CCS’s founder, William Au-Yang, sits on the board of the New Media Group, a Hong Kong-based telecommunications agency.
In accordance with SEC filings from 2007, Superb Solar’s principal bankers embrace the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Company (extra generally often known as HSBC) and Commonplace Chartered Financial institution. The previous has had a traditionally close-knit relationship with Jardine Matheson: the 2 have engaged in joint-ventures with each other, whereas members of the controlling household of Jardine Matheson, the Keswicks, have typically held management positions at HSBC. Commonplace Chartered, in the meantime, is intently tied to the Inchape household, a fixture of the British ruling class with quite a few considerations in world transport and manufacturing.
In terms of coping with inventory issuance and different enterprise affairs in the USA, Superb Solar retained the providers of the Financial institution of New York (now BNY Mellon), a banking establishment with a infamous historical past of involvement in organized crime-linked cash laundering and capital flight. Superb Solar itself has maintained a robust presence in New York Metropolis, the place it has been an lively participant on the earth of Manhattan actual property. Their New York-based actions have included partnerships with Polylinks Worldwide, a consortium of main Hong Kong households that has invested closely in the actual property markets in New York, San Francisco, London, and elsewhere. Polylinks is finest recognized for its 1994 deal—which Superb Solar didn’t take part in—with Donald Trump. When the long run president discovered himself saddled with quite a lot of money owed and was unable to pay what he owed for the development of his troubled Riverside South challenge, Polylinks stepped in and successfully took management of the event. In 2005, parts of Riverside South have been offered to the Carlyle Group.
A Deeper Have a look at Superb Solar
The chairman of Superb Solar is entrepreneur and billionaire Charles Yeung. Hailing from China’s Guangdong province, Charles and his brother, Yeung Chun-fan, based Superb Solar as a small-scale operation within the Nineteen Sixties. As we speak, the brothers personal the bulk Superb Solar by means of the pretty advanced construction of holding corporations talked about above. They’re vital stakeholders in Superb Solar Holdings and in Advancetex Holdings, which has bigger inventory holdings in Superb Solar’s varied company items.
The fast success of Superb Solar propelled the Yeung brothers—Charles specifically—to the heights of not solely financial, however political energy in Hong Kong. He served on the Provisional Legislative Council, a particular legislative physique arrange in the course of the handover of Hong Kong from the UK to the Individuals’s Republic of China. That is illustrative of Charles Yeung’s place inside the “pro-business, pro-Beijing” wing of Hong Kong’s ruling class. He has additionally been affiliated with the One Nation, Two Programs Analysis Institute think-tank and with the Hong Kong Progressive Alliance, a business-led political celebration that has had ties to liberal factions within the Communist Occasion of China. Yeung has additionally been lively within the Democratic Alliance for Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, which absorbed the Hong Kong Progressive Alliance in 2005.
Charles Yeung additionally seems to have maintained a presence in Macao, the previous Portuguese colony that, because the late Nineties, has been considered one of China’s particular administrative areas. The economies and banking methods of Macao and Hong Kong have been intently intertwined: for many years, the town was often known as one of many world’s premier zones for the (then-illicit) gold commerce, which was closely fueled by Hong Kong banks and their worldwide companions— with HSBC being one notably notable instance. Vital gold smuggling establishments in Macao included Seng Heng Financial institution. For a few years, the controllers of Seng Heng have been a small syndicate that included Ho Yin, a gold smuggler with shut ties to the Chinese language Communist Occasion, and Cheng Yu-tung, the founding father of Hong Kong’s New World Growth Firm. New World would later be concerned with the Polylinks consortium that took management of Donald Trump’s Riverside South actual property challenge.
Within the early Eighties, Ho Ying, Cheng Yu-tung and their companion, Lu Daohe, offered Seng Heng to Arkansas political kingmaker—and seasoned traveler within the worlds of worldwide commerce and intelligence operations—Jackson Stephens, in addition to his shut good friend and banking companion, Mochtar Riady. This buy curiously occurred the identical 12 months that Stephens and Riady took management of Worthen Financial institution in Arkansas, an entity intently related to Little Rock’s Rose Regulation agency and the rising political fortunes of the Clintons. As for Seng Heng, Stephens and Riady unloaded the financial institution in 1989 to STDM. This firm, based by Hong Kong-Macao billionaire businessman Stanley Ho, held a monopoly over Macao’s playing business. Ho himself has been haunted by quite a few accusations of affiliation with organized crime parts that function in Macao’s underworld.
That is the place Charles Yeung re-enters the image. When STDM bought Seng Heng from the Stephens-Riady syndicate, it maintained 100% possession and positioned its personal administrators and executives on the financial institution’s board. In 2007, a significant stake in Seng Heng was offered to the Industrial and Industrial Financial institution of China (ICBC). Because of the wariness that varied companies confirmed when it got here to coping with Seng Heng, largely as a result of its popularity as a “on line casino financial institution”, ICBC got down to revamp the financial institution’s picture. It distributed with a handful of the previous administrators—figures like Stanley Ho, nevertheless, stayed on with the board—and changed them figures that exemplified a brand new company ethos. Charles Yeung was considered one of ICBC’s new appointees.
But Cheung himself had been plagued with accusations of involvement with cash laundering, notably because it associated to Superb Solar’s operations within the Philippines. Superb Solar arrange a producing base there in 1976, which grew into the Philippines’ second largest attire exporter by 1983. This shift, which was a part of Superb Solar’s efforts to maneuver its manufacturing out of Hong Kong searching for decrease prices, occurred alongside a thaw within the China–Philippines relationship. For a lot of the Chilly Battle, the federal government of Filipino president Ferdinand Marcos was stalwartly anti-communist, and maintained shut ties to the PRC’s rival, the Kuomintang (KMT) or Nationalist Chinese language. Likewise, Marcos intently collaborated with the pro-KMT “China Foyer” in the USA.
In accordance with Sterling and Peggy Seagrave, the roots of the thaw might be traced to an association, made within the context of the Nixon-Kissinger overtures to China, to bolster international foreign money reserves in Chinese language-owned banks by the infusion of gold and different metals and money held by the Marcos household. A documented path exists displaying that, in the course of the Seventies, an incremental however regular movement of capital was deposited into varied banks in mainland China and in Hong Kong.
Superb Solar was accused of collaborating within the smuggling of Filipino wealth overseas because it was pilfered by the Marcos household by means of an advanced collection of transactions and orders between the Philippines and Hong Kong. A authorized criticismfiled with the Philippines’ Supreme Court docket charged that Yeung and different Superb Solar executives “acted as fronts or dummies, cronies or in any other case prepared instruments of spouses Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos… within the unlawful salting of international trade.” They purportedly did this by “importing materials from just one provider… at costs a lot larger than these being paid by different customers of comparable supplies”. Different paperwork from this case present that Archie Chan was additionally recognized as a participant within the scheme.
Ultimately, Superb Solar was acquitted of any involvement in “greenback salting” (i.e. the motion of capital in another country with out the approval of the Philippines’ central financial institution)—nevertheless it was beneath peculiar circumstances. Different case filingsnotice that “the courtroom held that the documentary proof related to this allegation [against Glorious Sun] was INADMISSABLE for being mere photocopies”.
That Superb Solar, and Archie Chan, would have connections to the Marcos household and their monetary schemes is important as different key gamers that enabled these schemes intersect with the Jeffrey Epstein-Ghislaine Maxwell community explored in One Nation Below Blackmail. One among Marcos household’s primary accomplices was none aside from arms seller and intelligence asset Adnan Khashoggi. Key to Khashoggi’s murky funds within the Eighties was Jeffrey Epstein, who – for an unspecified interval – was employed by Khashoggi for the needs of both discovering or hiding massive sums of “looted” cash (Epstein seemingly helped Khashoggi with each). One other high “monetary adviser” to Imelda Marcos was actor George Hamilton, who – within the early Nineties – was a confidant and trip companion of Ghislaine Maxwell proper up till she publicly aligned herself with Jeffrey Epstein shortly after her father’s loss of life in 1991.
Superb Solar might have further ties to this community through Mast Industries, a Hong Kong-based export-import agency with a specialty in textile items sourced from elsewhere throughout Asia. Through the early Seventies, Leslie Wexner contracted with Mast to produce materials for use for his company flagship, The Restricted. By the top of the last decade, Wexner bought Mast and it turned a significant subsidiary of his company empire.
Whereas that is at present no proof that signifies that Superb Solar used the providers of Mast Industries (although it could not be surprisingly, given its standing as considered one of Hong Kong’s main attire corporations), there are nonetheless connections between the 2 corporations. Through the late Seventies, Mast Industries fashioned a joint-venture known as Sinotex, with the Crystal Group Restricted, one more Hong Kong-based attire producer. A assessment of the affiliations of the Crystal Group’s founder, Kenneth Lo, reveals that he strikes in lots of the similar circles as Superb Solar’s Charles Yeung (for instance, each are honorary vice-chairmen of the Cling Seng College of Hong Kong). The top of the Crystal Group’s intimates division, in the meantime, is Lo Wing Sing Eddie, who had beforehand served because the managing director of Superb Solar’s main subsidiary, Jeanwest.
Apart from Superb Solar and the Yeung household, Archie Chan has one other connection that’s value noting. In 2009, Chan was made a Knight Commander of the Royal Order of the Kingdom of Poland. His sponsor was Paul Kan Man-Lok, a Hong Kong technology-focused businessman who had beforehand “been honored by Queen Elizabeth and quite a few Heads of State for his humanitarian service.” Paul Kan is the founder and chairman of Champion Know-how Holdings. Like Superb Solar and Chan’s Farmington Finance Company, Champion Know-how has made use of holding corporations arrange within the Street City, BVI.
Kan’s Champion Know-how has maintained a long-standing relationship with the Individuals’s Liberation Military (PLA), the PRC’s major navy group. The PLA has been an lively participant within the worlds of Chinese language and Hong Kong enterprise, working each overt and covert fronts for each the acquisition and improvement of cutting-edge expertise. As recounted in a 1997 Forbes article, Kan discovered himself partnering with the PLA within the late Eighties, when he hoped to arrange a Champion Know-how division in China devoted to radio paging expertise. “The bureaucrats on the Ministry of Posts & Telecommunications dithered”, the article recounts, “however corporations owned by the navy jumped on the probability… Kan… now has paging franchises in dozens of cities throughout China, primarily by means of partnerships managed by native items of the PLA.”
Altering Arms
As famous final week by Protos, Archie Chan is alleged to have primarily completed nothing with Farmington State Financial institution from 1995 till comparatively not too long ago. Nonetheless, his connections recommend that there might have been extra to his use of the financial institution, or on the very least his Farmington Finance Company, than meets the attention. In 2020, Chan offered the financial institution to FBH Company, which was included in 2019 and whose chairman is Jean Chalopin, a “seasoned entrepreneur” who went from taking part in a significant function in kids TV programming within the Eighties and Nineties to the most important shareholder of Deltec Financial institution and Belief and, subsequently, its chairman. It stays unknown if Chalopin knew Chan prior the sale and the way or why Chalopin took an interest within the tiny, Washington-based financial institution.
Shortly after Farmington was offered to Chalopin’s FBH Corp., Chalopin joined Farmington’s board of administrators. Notably, Deltec Financial institution and Belief, the place Chalopin is chairman, was described by Protos as “one of many primary banks for each Alameda Analysis [FTX’s trading arm that played a central role in its collasep] and Tether.” As famous by investigative journalist Nicola Borzi, Deltec ties again to the community behind the acute corruption and insider buying and selling of Kidder Peabody and Drexel Burnham Lambert within the Eighties (the connections of which to shadow banking and Jeffrey Epstein are detailed in One Nation Below Blackmail) in addition to to intelligence-linked figures like Armand Hammer. Extra on the FTX-Deltec Financial institution connections will probably be mentioned shortly.
Chan offered Farmington to an organization primarily based in Baltimore known as GUVJEC Funding Company, of which Chalopin is president, GUVJEC, nevertheless, was initially created by Robin Trehan, a self-described banking and fintech advisor whose focus is on “is on bringing blockchain tech to the lots by integrating the fintech business and conventional banking.” His LinkedIn says he has been a companion of Chicago-based Credit score Capital Funding for many years. Nonetheless, Trehan is a Senior VP of Deltec Worldwide, the father or mother firm of Deltec Financial institution and Belief. Trehan oddly excludes this from his LinkedIn profile.
Trehan and Chalopin are listed as govt officers of FBH Corp., in keeping with SEC filings from earlier this 12 months, in February. Listed as administrators of FBH are Noah Perlman and Gary Rever (referred to in filings as A. Gary Rever). Perlman on the time of FBH Corp’s incorporation was Chief Compliance Officer of the crypto trade Gemini. He’s now Gemini’s Chief Working Officer, a place he has held since 2020. Notably, the implosion of FTX induced someissues for Gemini, which briefly halted withdrawals from its “Gemini Earn” program as a result of fallout tied to the FTX chapter. The FTX implosion had affected the primary lender of that Gemini program, Genesis. Previous stories recommendthat Perlman was concerned in Gemini’s 2021 determination to companion with Genesis. Once more, like Trehan, Perlman excludes any point out of his function at Moonstone from his LinkedIn profile.
Quickly after its buy by the Chalopin-led FBH Corp, Farmington “pivoted to cope with cryptocurrency and worldwide funds,” however encountered issues shifting cash. It resolved these points by in search of Federal Reserve approval and have become a part of the Federal Reserve System in June 2021.
In March of this 12 months, Farmington State Financial institution trademarked the identify Moonstone Financial institution and adopted that identify three days later. 4 days after that, on March 7, FTX’s buying and selling arm, Alameda Analysis, invested $11.5 million into FBH Corp/Moonstone Financial institution. On the time, Chalopin acknowledged of the funding that “Alameda Analysis’s funding into FBH Corp and Moonstone Financial institution signifies the popularity, by one of many world’s most progressive monetary leaders, of the worth of what we’re aiming to realize. This marks a brand new step into constructing the way forward for banking.” It nonetheless stays unknown what this multi-million greenback funding was for, although Moonstone’s Chief Digital Officer Janvier Chalopin, the son of Jean Chalopin, informed Protos that the funding was “seed funding … to execute our new plan of being a tech-focused financial institution.”
The very same day that this vital funding was introduced, Ronald Oliveira was put in as Moonstone’s Chief Govt Officer, till he left Moonstone in August for causes which might be nonetheless unclear. A part of the confusion pertains to an incongruity between claims from Moonstone executives concerning the motive for Oliveira’s departure (that he had gotten a job “alternative he couldn’t refuse”) and what Oliveira has publicly written about his work since leaving the financial institution (that he’s now working as a self-employed marketing consultant).
Previous to becoming a member of Moonstone, Oliveira had been the US CEO for Revolut, “a world fintech headquartered within the UK.” The press launch which discusses each the funding and Oliveira’s new function at Moonstone states that Oliveira had “engineered Revolut’s official public entry into the US.” Revolut was created by NJF Capital in 2015 to be a “main digital various financial institution.” NJF Capital was based and is run by Nicole Junkermann, a former mannequin and shut, intimate affiliate of intercourse trafficker and monetary prison Jeffrey Epstein. Junkermann was allegedly concerned in main elements of his intercourse blackmail actions, together with the intercourse blackmail of two sitting US senators within the early 2000s, and later performed a key function in intelligence-linked corporations that Epstein had funded, equivalent to Carbyne 911. It’s unknown if the Alameda funding in Moonstone had influenced the choice to rent Oliveira or vice versa, although neither is exterior the realm of chance.
That is partially as a result of the controversial stablecoin Tether additionally banks with one other Chalopin-directed financial institution, Deltec Financial institution and Belief. A latest investigation by Revolver Information detailed the ways in which Tether has proven indicators of itself being a Ponzi Scheme, not not like FTX. The investigation additionally famous that the stablecoin’s co-founder, Brock Pierce, boasts connections to Jeffrey Epstein. Pierce, a former youngster actor in Disney movies, had beforehand been a co-founder and an govt at Digital Leisure Community (DEN), the place he and different executives have been accused of sexual assault. The case in opposition to Pierce was dropped after Pierce paid a substantial sum to one of many plaintiff’s legal professionals. Nonetheless, his co-defendant Marc Collins-Rector, the opposite co-founder of DEN, was indicted on prison costs. When Collins-Rector was arrestedby Interpol in 2002, the Spanish villa he shared with Pierce was discovered to comprise rifles, machetes and youngster pornography. DEN, throughout its temporary existence, produced a program that was described as a “homosexual pedophile model of Silver Spoons.”
As for Tether itself, not everybody believes it to be a Ponzi Scheme, as recommended by the aforementioned report revealed by Revolver Information. As an illustration, Marty Bent, a widely known bitcoiner who runs TFTC.io, informed Limitless Hangout that Tether was capable of shortly course of $10 billion in withdrawals following the collapse in worth of the TerraUSD/Luna cryptocurrencies this previous Could. This may recommend that Tether does certainly have the reserves at Deltec Financial institution and Belief that it claims to have. Bent recommended that Tether, as an alternative of being a Ponzi Scheme, was “extraordinarily excessive danger” and on the mercy of US regulators and different monetary authorities. It has since been reported that Sam Bankman-Fried of FTX is now beneath investigation for the potential function performed by FTX, Alameda Analysis and the aforementioned Genesis Buying and selling within the manipulation of TerraUSD/Luna costs earlier this 12 months, resulting in the crash of their worth in Could.
As well as, as famous by Soiled Bubble Media, Tether’s earlier banking companion previous to the Chalopin-led Deltec, Crypto Capital, was caught laundering cash for drug cartels (one thing the aforementioned HSBC has additionally been caught doingon a large scale). As well as, Soiled Bubble Media famous that Tether’s management has additionally paid massive fines for mendacity concerning the state of their reserves, that are ostensibly held by Deltec. Moreover, Tether’s CFO and CEO have been concerned “in one of many largest VAT tax evasion schemes in European historical past.”
As beforehand talked about, Alameda Analysis was additionally significantly concerned with Chalopin’s Deltec Financial institution and Belief, as have been different corporations tied to the FTX internet of corporations and Sam Bankman-Fried. These connections between the FTX internet and Deltec existed on the time of Alameda’s mysterious funding into FBH Corp/Moonstone Financial institution. Paperwork produced by John Ray, the newly-appointed CEO of FTX following its chapter, revealed that FTX and affiliated corporations/subsidiaries had a complete of 17 accounts at Deltec. Most of those accounts have been related to Alameda Analysis and West Realm Shires Companies, each of which have been finally managed by Sam Bankman-Fried. These 17 accounts have been held in quite a lot of currencies in keeping with stories, together with US {dollars}, euros, Swiss francs, Canadian and Australian {dollars} and the British pound sterling. Rumors circulated in latest weeks that FTX’s connections to Deltec had enabled the latter to accumulate Ansbacher, one other Bahamas-based financial institution, earlier this 12 months. Nonetheless, Deltec hasvigorously denied the allegations. Deltec has additionally, notably, declined to touch upon any particulars of their relationship with entities managed by Sam Bankman-Fried or tied to FTX. The Deltec-Tether affiliation and the Deltec-FTX/Alameda affiliation appear to be suggestive of a sample for the Chalopin-led Deltec. These associations additionally appear suggestive as to why Chalopin would search to accumulate Farmington/Moonstone Financial institution from somebody like Archie Chan.
Whatever the actual story behind Farmington’s transformation into Moonstone and Alameda’s determination to put money into the financial institution shortly thereafter, the quantity of deposits held by the financial institution jumped significantly after these developments. As famous by Protos, after “persistently report[ing] deposits hovering round $10 million for many years,” the financial institution reported $84 million in deposits within the third quarter of 2022. $71 million of these deposits have been from simply 4 new accounts.
The Protos report concludes the next:
“Nobody is ready to confirm what the $11.5 million funding from Alameda Analysis was for, nobody can clarify why a small, rural financial institution in southeastern Washington state could be used to maneuver thousands and thousands of {dollars} by Alameda, and nobody can absolutely clarify the connections between Farmington, Deltec, FTX/Alameda and Tether. To not point out, it stays unclear how a Bahamas-based firm like FTX, with ongoing investigations by high monetary watchdogs, was capable of buy a stake in a federally accepted financial institution.”
These factors have been additionally raised by the New York Instances, which quoted Camden High-quality, a financial institution business marketing consultant as saying:
“The truth that an offshore hedge fund that was principally a crypto agency was shopping for a stake in a tiny financial institution for multiples of its acknowledged e-book worth ought to have raised huge purple flags for the F.D.I.C., state regulators and the Federal Reserve…It’s simply astonishing that each one of this bought accepted.”
Moonstone and the “bridge” to CBDCs
Only a few weeks earlier than the implosion of FTX, in late October, Moonstone Financial institution partnered with just a little recognized firm known as Fluent Finance so as to “speed up crypto adoption by issuing US+ stablecoin.” That partnership is described as permitting “Fluent and Moonstone Financial institution to attach the normal monetary system to the rising Net 3 economic system.”
Fluent Finance has three co-founders: Bradley Allgood, Oliver Gale and Jaime Plata. Although Allgood is usually put out because the face of the corporate, it’s Gale and Plata who benefit essentially the most consideration. Oliver Gale is the self-described “inventor” of the Central Financial institution Digital Forex (CBDC), as he was the mastermind behind the Jap Caribbean Digital Greenback. Gale reportedly left this system as a result of its “ideological shift” towards a “permissioned blockchain” mannequin that affords central banks unprecedented management over the cash it prints. Nonetheless, at present, Gale, regardless of his pro-privacy posturing, is “not fully in opposition to CBDCs, offered they run on infrastructure that doesn’t endanger their customers.” Articles have famous Gale’s affect on main CBDC coverage papers which have the backing of the world’s strongest monetary establishments and central bankers, equivalent to these revealed by the CBDC suppose tank. Jaime Plata has labored as a “strategic advisor” to the Jap Caribbean Central Financial institution, the place he collaborated on Gale’s digital greenback challenge by serving to the financial institution “change their Core banking software, combine CBDCs and an actual time gross settlement system.”
Fluent Finance’s US+ stablecoin is designed to behave “as a technological bridge, connecting legacy [e.g. existing] banking methods and digital finance.” It’s overtly promoted as being suitable with CBDCs and as having “built-in digital id requirements.”
It’s actually attention-grabbing that two banking pursuits tied to Jean Chalopin, Deltec and Moonstone, each have intimate partnerships with dollar-based stablecoins, Tether and now US+. If Tether is about to unravel within the wake of FTX’s collapse, as some consider, US+ appears designed to be the “reliable” counterpart meant to herd the “legacy” monetary system into the CBDC period, the place central banks could have complete management. Nonetheless, this might have been a transfer geared toward fulfilling Sam Bankman-Fried’s final ambitions for FTX, which was to show FTX into the “every part trade” and the “every part app.” In different phrases, FTX aimed to be the primary power within the fintech area globally.
Whereas such goals have been shattered within the wake of FTX’s implosion, the trade’s efforts to broaden into each asset class invariably led to its enlargement by means of a labyrinthian community that’s nonetheless solely starting to unravel. Nonetheless, as this investigation has endeavored to indicate, the connections revealed by pulling on the only thread of its relationship with Farmington State Financial institution reveal that the corrupt actors and entities on this story prolong far past Bankman-Fried and FTX.
