Karatbars lies to FSCA, regulator doesn’t care
In a stunning backflip, South Africa’s FSCA has given up on regulating Karatbars International.
In response to the FSCA’s initial securities fraud warning last month, Karatbars informed the FSCA
that it markets two products in South Africa, one being the sale of gold bullion and the second the sale of a crypto-asset to be launched on a future date.
The “crypto-asset” it was triggered the FSCA’s warning, as Karatbars and its affiliates heavily promoted its KBC shitcoin as a passive investment opportunity.
Rather than investigate Karatbars claims, which would have quickly revealed KBC promotion dates back to at least July 2018, the FSCA appears to have taken the company’s claim at face value.
In an update published on December 13th, the FSCA advised
Neither of (Karatbars’) products fall within the definition of a financial product or service.
As such, they are not registered by the FSCA and fall outside the ambit of our jurisdiction.
And there you have it. South Africa’s top securities regulator refusing to regulate a blatant unregistered securities offering.
Unfortunately the FSCA rolling over on securities fraud means Karatbars and local promoters are free to continue promoting KBC investment across South Africa.
After pumping to 12.2 cents in the lead up to Karatbar’s hyped July 4th launch event, KBC dumped to 2 to 3 cents by the end of the month.
Nothing much has changed since then. Not that it matters, Karatbars management and its top promoters cashed out during the pump.
Sorry for your loss South Africa. What a shame your government doesn’t care.
Your post is factually incorrect. The statement “the sale of a crypto-asset” that Karatbars is referring to is the KCB coin which has yet to launch to the market, not the KBC.
KBC is on the open market and Karatbars does not sell this coin. There is thus nothing for the FSCA to investigate further.
Is that the KaratBank Coin bullshit? We first reported on that at the start of last year.
Nobody cares about that. The FSCA investigation was triggered by the KBC investment pitch. Same as the other countries.
Karatbars pulled a Lyoness and responded with misdirection about KCB.
Of course they do. Or at least Karatbars were still selling investment packages last I checked.
If they’ve stopped then it’s only because nobody was buying and/or regulators caught up with them.
Regardless, Karatbars’ coin packages are securities and regulated by the FSCA.
Too bad the South African securities regulator doesn’t want to regulate securities.
The answer is much simpler and could have occurred to the author:
The supervisory authority has been the victim of a smear campaign. This is shown by current court documents.
And the authority had to recognize by a complaint threat and the presentation of the appropriate evidence that it leads a hopeless fight.
Furthermore, the Wistleblower agency had to realize that it could not win the lawsuit.
Not everything is fraud. Even if we as the media often enough suspect this.
If they’re not selling it, who does? It didn’t appear out of thin air.
Nobody can mine it on their own, AFAIK.
And why does “Karat’s Gold Imperium”, as Seiz modestly calls himself, have a website called karatgold-kbc.com, with the title “KaratGold Coin (KBC)”, and listing an assortment of the company names Seiz trades under, and which is all about how he created KBC – if KBC is not something he sells?
There is also the slight problem that, according to Karat’s Gold Imperium himself on that same website, as of December 15th, so two days ago, and two days after the FSCA issued their statement, KBC and KCB appear the be one and the same thing.
At least, if I understood things on his extremely confusing website correctly, where it says, under “Roadmap”:
What is very confusing is that this is the one and only mention of this KCB thing on the site, the rest is all about KBC. But it’s apparently something that Seitz, just like KBC, can “hardfork” at will, and somehow combine with KBC into a single coin.
Or perhaps I misunderstand things completely, and this “single coin” that for two days now has been on “MainNet” is yet another, third thing, perhaps denominated by yet another rearrangement of the letters K, B and C, and KBC and KCB have ceased to exist? Or KBC and KCB each have been hardforked into two separate new things?
And if, as you say, the KCB thing isn’t yet on the market, what was it that was being hardforked two days ago?
It’s all terribly confusing. But I am sure you can explain all of it to us in simple terms which even we can understand.
So that we can firmly rule out one possible explanation, namely that Karat’s Gold Imperium himself cannot figure out anymore just what roles these supposedly different tokens he’s been juggling are supposed to play in his game of smoke and mirrors.
Besides all that, it is interesting to see that on that site he still repeats the lie that he owns a “KaratGold Mine”, and the lie that he owns a “KaratCoin Bank”.
The gold mine which he claims as his on Madagascar was shown to be
(a) owned by Rio Tinto;
(b) not a gold mine at all, but one that produces titanium and zircon (they clearly just picked a random name of a mine in Madagascar from a website);
(c) promoted by him with a fraudulent geological report showing there’s gold there, which was actually a genuine report on a copper mine somewhere in South America, in which he changed some words.
The “crypto bank” he claims to own in Florida is is another barefaced lie, he doesn’t have a banking license, anywhere in the world.
Has he been too busy to remove these publicly proven lies from his own websites?
But since you’re here, I was hoping that perhaps, since you’re so well-informed about all things KaratGold, you could enlighten me about one question which has been bugging me, and to which I have been unable to find an answer on the interwebs.
Strangely, not one of the many websites which Karat’s Gold Imperium owns himself seems to have the information.
Which university gave Seiz the honorary doctorate he claims, on the basis of which he puts “Dr.” in front of his name, and in what academic field?
(Perhaps you could also tell him that’s incorrect, if he really does have such an honorary doctorate, that would only entitle him to “Dr. h.c.”)?
@Jan Faber:
So I take it the German regulatory agency BaFin, which banned KaratBars from selling its cryptocurrency (you know, the one the poster DarkJak101 claims they don’t sell), and the German judicial authorities (the Staatsanwaltschaft Stuttgart to be precise), who are investigating Seiz for fraud, and the Florida Office of Financial Regulation, which is investigating his fraudulent claims to have a Florida banking license (a claim Seiz has actually admitted in an interview was a lie) have all got it completely wrong?
(BTW, the terms “victim of a smear campaign” and “whistleblower” do not mean what you seem to think they mean.)
@Jan
Yeah I have no idea what you’re talking about.
@PassingBy
If you already spread fake news, you should do it right.
Here is the original text:
As just confirmed, the Florida Financial Supervisory Authority is not investigating Karatbars, Harald Seiz or an affiliated company. No investigations were conducted at any time.
Here deliberately false rumors are scattered and false reports are spread. Who is responsible for this fraud on this website?
@David
Seeing as nobody mentioned a Florida Financial Supervisory Authority investigation, apparently you.
Not withstanding Karatbars shitcoin ICOs are illegal securities offerings in the US, same as anywhere else in the world.
@Jan
ProTip: Karatbit Foundation == Karatbars International == KaratGoldCoin == KBC == KCB == XYZ == any the other shell companies they’ve set up.
Absolute idiocy in this article. FSCA very clearly stated in their press release on their site that gold and cryptocurrencies do not qualify as securities or financial products, they are assets.
Therefore, Karatbars simply cannot register. Disgusting misinformation on your site, immoral and intentionally misleading.
Karatbars investment opportunity is the security, what they use to commit securities fraud with is irrelevant.
Like Karatbars, not owning up to the investment opportunity being a security is immoral and intentionally misleading.
Dunno about disgusting, but hey while we’re faking outrage let’s throw that one on there too.
KBC @ 1.9 cents lololololol. Did Karatbars create its new shitcoin fork out of thin air yet? (lololololol)
Ooops….
KBC = $0.00616454 -28.1%
Did Karatbars press a button and launch that fork shitcoin reboot their affiliates were going on about last year?
I bought a CEM machine thinking I could recoup at least part of my investment, however they changed the rules after I bought and will only replace cashgold once a month instead of replacing it as it ran out as promised.
So I had to purchase 5000 in cask gold and they will supposedly replace it but even so I have MY MONEY TIED UP TO SERVICE THEIR OBLIGATION.
I will not get my money back until the program stops or most likely they stop honoring their promises.
I WELCOME ANY AND ALL WHO DISAGREE WITH NE I HOPEI AM WRONG. But I DO NOT BELIEVE THEY HAVE A BANK, GOLD MINE, Gold IN storage or an IPO.
NZ join other Regulators around the World, warning about Ponzi Karatbars.
fma.govt.nz/news-and-resources/warnings-and-alerts/karatbars-karatbit/
Better late than never but geez, six months or so too late New Zealand.
So has anyone sued them? Particularly karatbit?
I would like the lawyers number. I’m surprised there hasn’t been a class action suit already.