El Salvador Development Bank, BANDESAL, Denies Public Access to Bitcoin Transaction Records
For the second time, BANDESAL, the Development Bank of El Salvador, denied a request from an anti-corruption institution to provide the government’s Bitcoin purchase and sale records. ALAC published on Twitter.
El Salvador Refutes Publishing Bitcoin Records
An anti-corruption organization uncovered on Sunday that BANDESAL, El Salvador’s development bank, had declined to give details on the contentious Bitcoin purchases and sales made by the government. The Anti-Corruption Legal Advisory Center (ALAC) of El Salvador offers El Salvador citizens legal support when calling out corruption claims.
The entity published a document from the bank in a late Sunday tweet, which stated that The El Salvador government prohibited BANDESAL from providing any transaction records made by the government for confidentiality.
El Salvador became the first country to accept Bitcoin as a legal tender. It delegated BANDESAL to manage funds for Bitcoin and other crypto projects. With Congress’ authorization, BANDESAL established a $150 million trust fund known as FIDEBITCOIN to make exchanging digital currency for US dollars easier before El Salvador declared it legal tender in September 2021.
The El Salvador anti-corruption commission jotted the tweet in Spanish, which translates to:
“Last September, BANDESAL refused for the second time to provide information on the purchase and sale of Bitcoin by the Salvadoran government, alleging reserve and contrary to the principle of maximum publicity and proportionality.”
BANDESAL Refused to Give the Transaction Records
According to BANDESAL’s refusal statement, no information regarding the Bitcoin Trust (FIDEBITCOIN) could be disclosed or issued by the trustee or its board of directors to protect national interests. According to statistics, El Salvador bought 2,301 Bitcoins, whose value has decreased from an estimated $103.9 million to around $45 million during the ongoing bearish crypto market sentiment.
ALAC El Salvador contested the rejection by emphasizing that the government was making gigantic risky Bitcoin purchases using funds that belonged to the public.
Due to the turmoil and confusion between the anti-corruption commission and the government, it is still unclear whether the government is purchasing Bitcoin. However, the government has not backed down since it decided to implement a law that would make BTC a legal tender. In July 2022, the President of the Central American country announced that his government had acquired 80 more Bitcoins at the market price of $19,000 per coin.
El Salvador Continues to Push Crypto Mass Adoption
El Salvador’s Bitcoin acceptance meant that bitcoin could be legally used as a digital currency to purchase goods and services. El Salvador has made moves to promote mass adoption in the country. Just recently, El Salvador introduced a state-sponsored cryptocurrency wallet with Bitcoin worth $30 that citizens could spend.
In addition, the government also sponsored Bitcoin ATMs that the government scattered around the country. El Salvador also decided not to tax Bitcoin transactions to encourage mass adoption. With a network of 212 cryptocurrency ATMs, El Salvador rose to the third position by putting up 205 ATMs to serve the nation’s booming Bitcoin ecosystem. However, Spain recorded 215 active installed ATMs, which account for 14.65% of all European installations.
