Since the earliest days of the cryptocurrency industry, Tether, the issuer of the world’s largest stablecoin by market capitalization, USDT, has been shrouded with controversies and numerous accusations. What comes as the latest blow to the growing stablecoin maker, a report by WSJ states that the company leveraged falsified documents and shell companies to gain banking access at a time when they were facing difficulty to access the global banking system.

Both Tether, which manages the $71 billion stablecoin, and its sister business Bitfinex, which is one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, found themselves in a vulnerable position in 2018, when they lost access to the traditional banking system. This presented what could be described as an “existential threat” to their company.

According to the report, a cache of emails and files that were reviewed by the WSJ reveals that an ongoing effort was made to remain connected to the banking system. The corporations behind USDT frequently masked their true identities by operating under the guise of other companies or individuals. However, the usage of third parties resulted in a few hiccups, including the seizure of assets worth millions of dollars and connections to a group that was officially recognized to be indulging in terrorism.