Famous French whistleblower Hervé Falciani is going to be launching a new cryptocurrency according to a Reuters report published on Friday.
Called Tabu, Falciani hopes that the new token will be picked up by regulatory authorities and used as a means of ensuring money is clean, and transactions are not conducted fraudulently.
Falciani says he has 5 million Tabu tokens, worth 2 million Euros ($2.3 million), that will be offered to investors once the National Securities Market Commission, Spain’s financial regulator, gives the project its approval.
The project has managed to raise 1.3 million Euros ($1.47 million) thus far but needs the additional 2 million euros to ensure that it can succeed.
Tabu was created by Tactical Whistleblowers, a non-profit organization which Falciani founded.
Based in Valencia, the organization includes a number of academics, mostly mathematicians, from the Valencia Polytechnic University in eastern Spain.
Blockchain for government
Alongside his cryptocurrency project, Falciani plans on launching a blockchain system that can be used to authenticate government procurement contracts.
Across the globe, such contracts are regularly used as a means of putting money into the pockets of corrupt government officials and their buddies in the private sector.
The new system will be called ‘Aletheia,’ which, as our classics-loving readers will already know, is a Greek term which translates to ‘disclosure’ in English.
“Fake information is the basis of any kind of fraud,” Falciani told Reuters. “The same way that we have to deal with fake news, the same technology can [be] applied to fake invoices.”
A former computer programmer with HSBC, Falciani shot to fame in 2008 after he leaked a huge spreadsheet containing the names of 130,000 potential tax evaders.
Fearing extradition to Switzerland, where he faces up to five years in prison, he moved to Spain six years. He was arrested in the summer of last year by local authorities but released shortly afterward, with a Spanish court saying it does not recognize the charges made against him by the Swiss government.
(Photo: Hervé Falciani)
