The reporting is crammed with bombshell allegations: secret investments into cryptocurrency mining firms, South African fixers providing personal jet bribes, billions of {dollars} transferring between rip-off facilities in Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand, and KuCoin establishing its Thai subsidiary to serve the individuals and corporations behind this pig butchering economic system.
Former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra – who’s at the moment in a jail hospital serving a sentence – is on the heart of all of it.
Protos has beforehand reported on KuCoin’s authorized issues, which embody allegations of failing to implement correct know-your-customer and anti-money laundering guidelines, permitting Workplace of Overseas Belongings Management (OFAC)-sanctioned people to launder hundreds of thousands of stolen {dollars} from US banks, and inspiring non-compliance by urging and permitting US residents to commerce on the platform.
KuCoin Thailand’s function
KuCoin, which has been seen as a shadow of its peak, opened its Thai subsidiary in June of this 12 months.
The connections between KuCoin’s former executives, ‘fixer’ Benjamin Mauerberger, and former prime minister Shinawatra are complicated however convincing and present how simply money, crypto, and airplanes could be utilized to obfuscate and muddy the waters within the already murky waters of Southeast Asian finance.
KuCoin allegedly bought a stake in a Thai securities agency known as Finasia X PCL by way of the spouse of Mauerberger as a part of its entry into the nation. Mauerberger was additionally concerned in former Prime Minister Shinawatra’s buy of a brand new personal jet.
The extent of pig butchering scams and facilities in Southeast Asia has been detailed not solely by monetary fraud investigators but additionally by victims who’ve needed to escape kidnapping and detention. It’s suspected that tens of billions of {dollars} are misplaced to the scammers yearly.
KuCoin despatched stop and desist letter
In accordance with one of many founders of Mission Brazen, the media outlet “received a cease and desist letter from KuCoin’s legal team demanding [they] remove [their] investigation into [KuCoin’s] alleged role in a $1.5 billion money laundering network.”
The stop and desist letter requires retractions, social media submit deletions, and an apology inside 48 hours. Mission Brazen has indicated they won’t abide by the stop and desist.
We had been capable of attain out to Tom Wright at Mission Brazen about his reporting on KuCoin. We requested if he believed KuCoin was utilizing authorized strategies to aim to silence the media outlet, and Wright advised us he has “no idea on their legal strategy,” however that Mission Brazen will “keep reporting the truth… [including] KuCoin’s efforts to secretly buy up a large stake in a Thai finance company.”
KuCoin’s stop and desist letter makes clear that it denies lots of the allegations: denying that it owns a stake in Finansia X PCL, denying that any of its operations in Cambodia, Laos, or Thailand had been arrange for illicit functions, and denying that it “is a central component of, or knowingly involved in, a criminal money-laundering network.”
Protos reached out to KuCoin for remark, and they didn’t reply. In the event that they do reply to our request for an announcement, the story will probably be up to date to mirror that.
