The Wall Street billionaire who is leading the transition team in charge of staffing the incoming Trump administration is one of the candidates who could become the next Treasury secretary, according to a report.
Howard Lutnick, CEO of private investment bank Cantor FitzgeraldTrump has a top aide leading his transition team.
Since Trump’s landslide election victory last Tuesday, Lutnick has been gathering names of people who will fill thousands of jobs in the incoming administration.
“We’ve got a lot of candidates,” Lutnick told CNN On 31 October. “We’re very prepared – I feel great.”
Lutnick and transition team co-chair Linda McMahon are tasked with filling nearly 4,000 positions across the federal government. This includes everyone from the Secretary of State and other heads of Cabinet departments to those elected to serve part-time on boards and commissions.
About 1,200 of those presidential appointments require Senate confirmation, which should become easier now that the Senate has shifted to Republican control.
If Trump appoints Lutnick to head the Treasury, it could potentially create a conflict of interest as he would have oversight of potential sanctions being levied against Tether, a digital stablecoin launched in 2014. Was and is linked to the US dollar. For report.
In press interviews, Lutnik has promoted Tether. Cantor Fitzgerald also manages a large portion of Tether’s reserve assets, specifically US Treasury bonds that back the cryptocurrency.
Lutnick could also hold a senior position in the Trump administration that would give him influence over cryptocurrency-related decisions – creating another potential conflict of interest.
The Treasury Department has been investigating Tether since before Lutnick joined the Trump campaign, according to sources with knowledge of the situation. Told the Washington Post.
According to the newspaper, Treasury officials stressed that any potential sanctions imposed on Tether have no connection to Lutnick’s political activities.
Cryptocurrency stocks surged after Trump’s landslide election victory last Tuesday. During the campaign, Trump promised to appoint industry-friendly executives to top positions – ushering in an era of deregulation.
Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency, broke its previous record and hit an all-time high of $83,361 per unit on Monday.
As of Monday, Tether’s market capitalization was $123.5 billion Cryptocurrency trading platform Coinbase.
In January, Lutnick told Bloomberg News He can personally confirm the authenticity of Tether’s financial statements, telling the financial media outlet: “They have the money they say they have.”
But Treasury Department investigators are investigating alleged links between cryptocurrencies and international criminals.
Tether could face sanctions by the federal government on charges of facilitating transactions for Mexican drug cartels.
There are also concerns that terrorist organizations such as the Palestinian group Hamas are using cryptocurrencies to finance their operations.
In October last year, Wall Street Journal cites Israeli government seizure orders And blockchain analytics reports indicate that Palestinian terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad raised hundreds of millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency in the months leading up to the October 7 attacks.
“Tether is being used for terrorist funding and is being widely used in crypto fraud and scams,” said Adam Zrazinski, CEO of cryptocurrency intelligence firm Inka Digital. told The Post in February.
According to the report, the transactions were primarily processed through Tether.
Tether executives said the $93 million amount reported by The Journal was “wildly overstated and inaccurate.”
For months, Tether has been the subject of scrutiny by federal investigators, who say the cryptocurrency is used by Russia to facilitate payments and circumvent sanctions imposed on the country in the wake of its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
In June, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network published an advisory alleging that international criminal groups were using Tether and other digital currencies to purchase equipment and chemicals from Chinese suppliers.
Tether has denied the allegations.
Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino wrote on Twitter last month that there is “no indication that Tether is under investigation.”
Tether also released a statement saying it “has no knowledge of any such investigation into the company.”
The post sought comment from Lutnik, Tether and the Treasury Department.
(TagstoTranslate)Business(T)US News(T)Bitcoin(T)Cantor Fitzgerald(T)Cryptocurrency(T)Howard Lutnick
