The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has initiated an audit of the crypto-credit platform Salt Lending Holdings Inc., because of the $50 million attracted by it through the ICO in 2017, as reported by the WSJ. In particular, the regulator is interested in the connection of the platform with the head of the crypto exchange ShapeShift Erik Voorhees.
Salt was founded in 2016 and allows users to receive loans in fiat, collecting collateral in cryptocurrency. Sources familiar with the situation report that the platform received regulator’s agenda back in February.
Among other things, SEC intends to examine whether the sale of Salt tokens was carried out last year in violation of the requirements of laws in the field of securities, how the proceeds were used and how tokens were distributed among employees.
Also found in the SEC documents of the operating company Salt, dated August 2017, Erik Voorhees was named a “director”. He appeared in promotional materials and on the Salt website. In November, after the start of the crowdsale, his name disappeared. The head of Salt, Jennifer Nealson, said that Voorhees was indeed an early participant in the project, but no longer has anything to do with it. If the participation of Voorhees was a violation of the law, Salt may be fined.
Earlier, Voorhees had already come to the regulator’s attention and was forbidden to attract fundings in private equity markets. In 2014, he was fined $50,000 for allegedly unregistered distribution of securities in two companies related to bitcoin.
Also in September’s investigation by the WSJ, ShapeShift platform was named the main laundering for criminal money. It was stated that over the past two years, $9 million, allegedly related to the criminal activity, was laundered through a popular platform for an instant exchange of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. This makes it the largest platform among the other 46 cryptocurrency exchanges, through which the total of $88.6 million was laundered.
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