Millionaire broker and well-known Bitcoin skeptic Peter Schiff woke up to find that his bank was under scrutiny again due to an international criminal investigation.
According to reports from Australia’s “Times” and the US “New York Times”, after the sudden release of the “Panama Documents”, the joint working group J5, composed of major Western government tax agencies, has already reviewed the “statistics of Schiff’s Puerto Rico-based Europac “Hundred” accounts were investigated for tax evasion and other financial crimes.
These reports detail a disgraceful organization responsible for hiding property for a group of shameless businessmen and criminals. The task of the employees hired after a quick search on Google is to attract customers, such as the famous Australian fraudster and tax avoider Simon Antequetil.
The report also revealed how Europac may have tainted Schiff’s favorite asset held by the public: gold.
Former Australian Federal Police investigator John Chevis discovered in 2017 that the Perth Mint, owned by the Western Australian State Government, was closely related to Europac.
Chevis told The Times: “I am very surprised. Some of the gold held by Europac clients in the Perth Mint may be held to benefit from criminals in other parts of the world. This is a big risk.”
In an interview with The Times last month, Schiff denied the wrongdoing of Europac, saying that the bank “rejected accounts far beyond the number we approved because our compliance is very strict.”
He said of these allegations: “This has nothing to do with reality.”
He ended the interview angrily.
However, there is a key detail in these reports, which may reveal why Schiff criticizes the world’s most popular cryptocurrency Bitcoin so strongly.
The Times stated:
“The security of the bank is also an issue… The Russians tried to blackmail the bank 1,000 bitcoins.”
Although Schiff has criticized Bitcoin as early as 2013, this scheme of extortion may explain why he has been particularly outspoken lately, especially when he and Gemini co-founder Tyler Winklevoss had a spat on Twitter.
Schiff also showed a history of paranoia about hacking, especially hacking related to cryptocurrency. In July of this year, Schiff hinted that an American teenager’s attack on multiple Twitter accounts might be a “harbinger” of Bitcoin hacking. In April, he said on Twitter that the technology of hackers attacking the blockchain and counterfeiting Bitcoin has the potential for improvement.
Although Schiff is worried that the Bitcoin blockchain may be hacked, there is nothing comparable to pyrite (which is ostensibly similar to gold) in the field of digital assets.