Plan B, one year later: the RSI report on the Lugano-Tether partnership

A lengthy report by RSI, the Italian-language Swiss Radio and Television, produced by the editorial staff of Falò, a programme similar to RAI’s Report

A lengthy report by RSI, the Italian-language Swiss Radio and Television, produced by the editorial staff of Falò, a programme similar to RAI’s Report, turned the spotlight on Lugano’s Plan B, the joint initiative between the city’s municipal administration and the company Tether to promote and experiment with the use of blockchain technology on a large scale in the city, seeking to take stock one and a half years after the project’s launch.

The focus of the TV programme was on the city’s partner, Tether, which is the world’s largest stablecoin, launched by the company Tether Limited Inc. in 2014, which has always been criticised for the lack of transparency and verifiability of its declared fiat reserves.

The certification of reserves

On its website, Theter Limited Inc. publishes the certification of reserves, i.e. a document that purports to prove the actual existence of the raised capital processed by a specialised company.

After having changed several certifiers, the CSR informs us, all of dubious reputation, located between the Cayman Islands and the Bahamas, the company’s top management chose in recent years BDO Italia, a company based in Milan, a city 7,000 km away from Theter’s headquarters.

The certificate is only a ten-page document. Giancarlo Bellavia, an expert in economic criminal law, intervened in the news report by RSI, stating that it was a report by an auditing company on these reservations, highlighting the fact that none of them went to the Tether office, which provided the documentation on the basis of which the certificate was drawn up.

This documentation would attest to the presence of money, gold, bonds and a small amount of bitcoin for a total of 80 billion dollars and, therefore, summarises the process by which this document was arrived at: ‘Tether sends the papers to the company in Milan, which, after examining them, affirms that it has reserves of value totalling 80 billion dollars, thus having to trust a company that has no accounting because nothing is said about who the banks or depositaries of these reserves are because it is not written in the certification relating to them’. Professor Bellavia emphasises that normally when one asks an auditing company for a certificate, the latter should do a physical check and go to where the registered office is and examine whether there really is this money, and stresses that ’80 billion dollars is a lot in a bank on a beach’. At this point, the CSR reporter asks him the question: “Under these conditions, how can an auditing company certify?” and the professor replies that the auditors should be asked and continues by saying that if someone chooses for their business to go to the British Virgin Islands (BVI, where Tether is based) they do so “because they can say whatever they like, since no one checks”. At this point, the report informs that BDO Italy did not want to answer their questions and underlines the fact that in the last two years it has been sanctioned four times by the Italian authorities, who have imposed fines of more than EUR 1 million for violation of auditing standards.

In November 2022, the same company certified the balance sheets of Italy’s largest cryptocurrency platform The Rock Tradingas healthy , pointing outthe fact that after three months the company went bankrupt, leaving a hole of over 20 million euro and thousands of damaged customers (see cover image of the article).

Plan B, one year later

The RSI programme documented a lively meeting of the Lugano municipal council dedicated to Plan B, and among the various voices against it, the most significant was that of Danilo Baratti, leader of the Lugano Green group, who asked whether it was “appropriate to ally oneself with a company (Tether) whose ownership structure is unknown, which is not transparent about its own means, has no public balance sheet, is not subject to any control and audit body, and is based in a tax haven?”

There, Michele Foletti, the mayor of Lugano (pictured above) responded by saying that blockchain technology is transparent, and makes it possible to check the origin of funding, pointing out that “the technological tool is neutral, the problem is the use that is made of it” and that in any case the City of Lugano has not put any money into this project.

The Wall Street Journal investigations

The CSR reporters highlighted the fact that Tether ‘is based in the British Virgin Islands (BVI), a notorious tax haven, a place with few rules and few controls’ and little is known about what the world’s largest stable coin company does and who is behind it. So they interviewed Ben Foldy, a journalist from the Wall Street Journal, who has conducted several investigations into Tether. Interviewed by the CSR reporters, he said that there are many unanswered questions about this company and its eponymous token, which is called a stable coin because its creators claimed that each Tether must be matched by one US