Ardoino, CEO of USDT issuer Tether, responded to a Senate report alleging that the company supported illicit financial activity linked to Iran, saying it froze suspicious addresses before they were officially sanctioned and that the volume of Iran-linked stablecoins fell by 94%.
According to CoinDesk, the dispute stems from a report published last month by Democrats on the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. The report, led by Senator Richard Blumenthal, accused Tether of serving as a major funding channel in Iran’s illicit financial network.
The report focused in particular on practices before 2024 and argued that flagged wallets had not been comprehensively frozen. Democratic senators claimed that this shortcoming facilitated misuse and prompted organizations such as Hamas to encourage the use of USDT instead of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
Freeze timeline takes center stage in Tether’s defense
In a statement on Monday, Ardoino argued that the report overlooked the company’s sanctions compliance efforts. According to the CEO, since 2023 Tether has frozen the addresses in question an average of four weeks before they were officially sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and Israel’s National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing (NBCTF).
Ardoino also said that in 99% of the addresses discussed in the report, the freeze took place before blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis labeled them. He claimed that the company’s actions had reduced the volume of Iran-linked stablecoins by 94%.
Actors pushed away from USDT turn to other methods
Tether’s CEO had also responded to the report when he joined the DC Fintech Week event in Washington remotely last Tuesday. Criticizing the report’s release to the media before the company had a chance to review it, Ardoino said the public should also hear Tether’s account.
According to Ardoino, the company’s goal is to push bad actors away from USDT. The CEO argued that these individuals are now turning to methods beyond the control of both the U.S. and Tether, and emphasized that the company’s work to combat them is not yet finished.
Following the report, Blumenthal also began examining the relationship between Tether and its U.S. financial partner, Cantor Fitzgerald. The dispute thus expanded beyond when suspicious wallets were frozen to include the company’s financial ties in the United States.
Not investment advice.