iFinex Appears to Have Hired A New Offshore Corporate Services Provider

By Kapil Gauhar

Bitfinex’s parent company, iFinex seems to have hired a new offshore services provider recently. A trademark application, dated 31st October, gives iFinex’s address as care of SHRM Trustees (BVI) Ltd.c marking a change from earlier trademark applications, including one that was filed in June 2017, which gave the address of Estera Corporate Services (BVI) Ltd.

Both Estera and SHRM, the filings show, are situated in the capital of the British Virgin Islands – Road Town.

Jakal Intel was the first to spot the change. He is a pseudonymous sleuth who describes their focus on “OSINT {open-source intelligence} led investigations into the investment scams as well as Ponzi schemes”.

As indicated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ (ICIJ) database of offshore leaks, Estera, previously known as Appleby, also served as a director of Tether Holdings Ltd. Tether is firmly tied to Bitfinex’s shareholders and sharing directors, and Tether Holdings was enrolled at the same Town Road address as iFinex.

The Managing Director of Estera Corporate Services, Gareth Thomas confirmed that iFinex is not at all a client of Estera. The change of iFinex’s in offshore service providers recalls a long search for a stable banking comrade that Tether and Bitfinex engaged in under significant public scrutiny.

As a result of invasion by Wells Fargo, the two corporate firms lost access to Taiwanese banks in early 2017. Based in Puerto Rico, Noble Bank filled the gap, but that relationship reached to an end in last October.

The anxiety around Tether and Bitfinex in the market continues. Recently, Bitfinex introduced a 3% fee on large as well as frequent deposits, that many people interpreted as being developed to slow down the pace of withdrawals from the exchange, was given that customers are complaining that they have been waiting for weeks to receive fiat withdrawals.