Three Sued Over Blockchain Firm Trading
Matthew Heller, 12 July 2021
The controlling shareholder of Long Blockchain has been charged with tipping off his broker about the company’s pivot to blockchain technology before it was publicly announced.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said Eric Watson, a New Zealand national, engaged in an insider trading scheme with Oliver Barret-Lindsay, his friend and broker, and stock promoter Gannon Giguiere, that allegedly resulted in Giguiere making a profit of $162,500 on Long Blockchain shares.
According to the SEC, Watson tipped off Lindsay in December 2017 that the company formerly known as Long Island Tea would be switching from making iced tea and lemonade to providing blockchain technology and Lindsay passed the tip on Giguiere. Continue reading “Article: Three Sued Over Blockchain Firm Trading”
In December 2017, at the peak of the era that many refer to as ‘crypto mania’, New York-based beverage maker ‘Long Island Ice Tea’ changed its name to “Long Blockchain Corp. At the time of the rebrand, the beverage maker said they would transition out of manufacturing beverages and focus their efforts on blockchain technology. 
Money laundering can often be seen as a somewhat nebulous, victimless crime that doesn’t affect the everyday person. But Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit Guidance and Outreach Manager Dr Clara Borg Bonaci tells David Lindsay about how money laundering not only deprives government coffers of funds that could be used for the betterment of society, it also feeds serious predicate crimes such as the trafficking of drugs and arms, human smuggling and child sexual exploitation – ‘horribly destructive crimes that have an immense social cost’
Earlier this week the Council of Europe’s MONEYVAL published a progress report showing significantly improved ratings for Malta in its fight against money laundering and terrorist financing from a technical perspective. Thursday’s report clearly acknowledged the progress made since Malta’s earlier evaluation, at times doing so quite openly when confirming that, “Malta was among the first MONEYVAL countries to implement the regulatory and institutional framework and conduct assessment of money laundering and terrorist financing risks in this area. Malta’s rating on the implementation of this recommendation has been upgraded from ‘partially compliant’ to ‘largely compliant’.”