The article is very light on real details despite what you claim. I work in AML adjacent field and I can’t help but see that we would politely decline to do business with company that transacts this way.

It is very stupid to use a centralized digital coin to avoid taxes while you can just avoid declaring what you earned when you get cash instead of digital payments

Does your revenue service have a way of monitoring this or would they have to verify each case manually? This is an obfuscation mechanism.

I’m not sure what this means

Are they checking if their business partners are on sanctions lists, as required by law? How many people at Sardex are hired and accountable for compliance with anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing regulations?

In your country companies are legally required and accountable for making sure their user are paying taxes? Here they are required traceability and stuff but it’s not their job to do the guardia di finanza job.

I’m not asking who’s collecting taxes but who’s making sure they’re paying taxes. In EU and most of the civilised world banks would be liable if they were aware or didn’t do enough due diligence to spot that.

This is not a bias against Italy, it’s a bias against businessmen. This happening in Sicily just makes for a funnier context.

Who in this financial setup is legally required and accountable for making sure they are paying taxes? Are they checking for sanctions? What are the consequences of not being compliant? Has anyone ever been found to be not compliant?

I still have trouble understanding what problem does Sardex solve (which is flat out a red flag in context of AML). It’s described that it allows for lending activity as well as barter. For all the talk of not being a currency it is one because that’s the only new thing that it brings to the table. You can do all of those things with bank relegated to holding cash at hand only.

And for all those dubious benefits, it certainly helps with all the pesky due diligence that a regular bank does on the behalf of the government. I wasn’t born yesterday - this is done to obfuscate anything from tax avoidance to human trafficking.

• Unclear relationships and methods of accounting, especially in the context of taxes ✅
• Evading AML/CTF regulations ✅
• Taking on roles typically fulfilled by the government ✅
• in Southern Italy ✅

This sounds like mafia is replacing government currency with their own. How is taxation handled? Is it legal because it can’t be exchanged into EUR officially?