Tether, Bitfinex agree to drop opposition to FOIL request.

Tether and Bitfinex have agreed to drop an initial objection to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIL) request filed by several top news publications in New York.

In a statement shared with Cointelegraph from the USDT stablecoin issuer and cryptocurrency exchange, it said it is committed to openly sharing information following a FOIL request from CoinDesk earlier this year.

The companies indicated that they would not release documents openly, stating that the procedure was inconsistent with their business practices.

“It's important to make it clear that transparency does not mean we release all of our documents en masse.”

Tether and Bitfinex will not appeal the FOIL request filed by journalists including Zeke Fox, Shane Shifflett and Ada Hui, who say this is despite “certain behaviors” by the writers in question.

The company claims that Fox's previous reports on Tether and Bitfinex “stretched beyond the bounds of professional journalism.” They also claim that media outlets involved in the ongoing FOIL inquiry, including The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg, are “biased and inaccurate.”

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The statement emphasized that both companies are “adhering to ethical reporting standards and respecting the boundaries of data privacy” and are committed to being transparent and transparent with journalists and regulatory authorities.

Tether and Bitfinex also called for a “responsible document review” before any public information is released, saying their efforts to be transparent “does not equate to unlimited public disclosure of all documents.”

Cointelegraph has reached out to Tether to verify the FOIL request and related information.

The ongoing FOIL request comes after Tether and Bitfinex reached a settlement with the New York Attorney General's (NYAG) office in February 2021. As CNBC first reported, this includes paying an $18.5 million fine to settle a two-year legal dispute. $850 million in client and corporate funds are said to have come in.

Part of the settlement required Tether and Bitfinex to submit quarterly transparency reports to the NYAG for two years. Following the expiration of these obligations, Coindesk filed a FOIL request in New York, seeking to make public the material it submitted pursuant to the settlement agreement regarding Tether's first quarter.

In June 2023, Tether said it had resisted a FOIL request to prevent the public release of “confidential customer data” that it feared could be used by “malicious actors.”

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