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Kontigo: Y Combinator's Venezuelan Sanctions Evasion Startup

fintechbusinessweekly.substack.com
8 points·by firekvz·il y a 6 mois·2 comments

Ask HN: Is YC funding sanctions evasion? The case of Kontigo Inc in Venezuela

11 points·by firekvz·il y a 6 mois·3 comments

comments

firekvz
·il y a 6 mois·discuss
Open core, not open source, only for the Community edition, wait till you notice that you will need enterprise license since most powerfull features/addons are enterprise only and you end up paying more money for "open source" ERP than normal ERP
firekvz
·il y a 6 mois·discuss
Thank you, I Will fill the form and hope something happens

Among the crazy things that Kontigo did, was that they allowed Venezuelans to open an US bank account, without any check or anything, you just had to put random "passport number" on a field (no kyc or anything) and they would issue you a chase checkings account number.

heres the ig advertising for that service: https://www.instagram.com/reels/DMljYtUsrDI/

anyways, they got shut down by chase few days ago:

https://www.pymnts.com/cryptocurrency/2025/jpmorgan-chase-fr...
firekvz
·il y a 9 mois·discuss
Imagine telling venezuelans living in venezuela, to go educate themselves about venezuela

Sire thing your links will be right and all my years suffering here are BS
firekvz
·l’année dernière·discuss
you will be surprised, but it's all about corruption oportunities.

In venezuela right now, there's a YC startup (2023), "Kontigo" [1], who's part of it, they went all in with this "stablecoin" bullsh*t and manage to get a license to operate in US (stripe) and with Venezuelans users with absolutely NO KYC, fully connected and "licensed" by the venezuelan "National Superintendence of Cryptoassets and Related Activities" a.k.a SUNACRIP

Take note that this SUNACRIP had closed operations since 2020 when a huge corruption scandal hit the govt, they used crypto to run corruption operations and money laundering [2][3][4] and somehow SUNACRIP, an organization that is not even working or functioning, this january licensed "Kontigo" to operated in the country, the founders themselves made a bragging video on instagram about "noone expecting it", wich is hillarious, you can find the video at https://www.instagram.com/p/DFd8ouoNKuI/

Anyways, the corrupted govt, approved a YC startup to exchange instantly USDC to VEF using venezuelans banks APIs and USA banking system (plaid, stripe, etc), without any KYC, without any sanctions screening, nothing, the reason for this approval is pretty simple, they doing the money laundering process super easy for them lol, they helping venezuelan corrupts officials bypass sanctions and easy money laundering.

I'm absolutely baffled at the situation and wondering how the fuck this happened, I myself know lower/mid size venezuelan corrupt officials using Kontigo to instantly wash money into USDC, and all of this is backed by YC itself.

And inbefore any user comes here telling me that "venezuela is sanctioned" and whatever other random thing, this company absolutely doesnt help venezuelans, it only helps corruption and launder money from corruption and drugs

[1] https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/kontigo [2] https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caso_PDVSA-Cripto [3] https://news.bitcoin.com/how-crypto-ended-up-at-the-center-o... [4] https://www.criptonoticias.com/judicial/fiscal-venezuela-con...
firekvz
·il y a 2 ans·discuss
noone knows, but the real question is why any govt hasnt done any significative investigation or attack on tether? the only explanation i see (from the US pov) is that they actually collaborating in deeper investigations so they let it coexist, otherwise it makes no sense how legitimated it is knowing that it's pure fake money and it's not backed up at all

bitcoin wont be real till tether dissapears
firekvz
·il y a 2 ans·discuss
how you guys interpretate all this price swings with barely no trade volumen increase?

i think the whole crypto narrative it's slowly dying, okay its ATH now, but yeah, we still got this huge elephant in the room called tether and well u know
firekvz
·il y a 4 ans·discuss
This is an super exaggerated number to attributte only to sactions, our TOTALITARIAN REGIME actions killed those people and the reality is that sanctions just helped them

Before the sanctions, (that started in 2015), we had already huge economical problems (and problems of kinds), mainly due the goverment focusing on making one of the greatest corruption acts of all times [1] and focusing on systematically making the venezuelan population poorer, sicker, hungrier and dependant, in order to keep the power and keep stealing money.

The thing is, sanctions did absolutelly NOTHING in favour of venezuelans citizens and their freedom, in fact, they made it easier for the Venezuelan totalitarian regime to justificate their acts (forcing hunger, violating human rights [2], etc) and made it stronger in a way that since our country got alienated, we got more support from other totalirian regimes such as China and Rusia.

So hurting the ordinary people, as that post say, was just putting an extra nail to the coffin of every venezuelan that died of hunger and sickness.. Was just encouraging more people to fight for freedoom with rocks vs guns and died or got detained [3] [4]...

All for nothing, and 6 years later, over 300billions usd stolen later, 2.000.000% hyperinflation later, 7.000.000 venezuelans gone later, over 400 people killed in protest later, over 5,000 political detentions later, the govt is still there and... blocking venezuelans from using stripe, transferwise, etc, is going to help us haha ..

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_Venezuela

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Venezuela

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuelan_protests_(2014%E2%8...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Venezuelan_protests
firekvz
·il y a 4 ans·discuss
> Disrupting the everyday lives of Russian citizens

No it doesnt because is not a democratic country, why is it so hard for people like you to understand that things work very different in a democratic country than in non-democratic country?

Do you know what happens when you are in a country that doesnt respect human rights and you go to "protest"?

Do you know what happens when you, as a citizen with no power, try to fight a military regime?

Do you really think, russians right now are enjoyinig this and will somehow march to get Putin's head because their quality of life will be miserable now? no, they wont, because the moment they start doing it, they will be repressed and killed, and there you will be, super happy sharing your support posts to those people

the worst part of all of these, is that you don't realize that one of the goals of putin is to undermine his own state, so he can keep power for the years to come, and here you are, helping him :), good job at making every russian life even worse.
firekvz
·il y a 4 ans·discuss
As a non-russia customer, I am inmediatly moving all of my domains I host at namecheap to another provider.

this kind of stuff from private companies are useless, and downvote me all you want, they do not work, and dont come to lecture me from your SF desk while im living in a sanctioned country, how did the 2017-2019 sactions for Venezuela worked? Everyone in the world moved on and even forgot about our country, and the comunist regime is more alive than ever, all the sactions just fucked the regular people like me, for example my gf is still explaining after 2 years to those idiots at transferwise support that her money sitting on their super awesome "no borders account" has nothing to do with the venezuelan govt and that it's from her US based remote job but they just decided to steal over 22k USD from her solely based on her citizenship. Or should I tell you how stripe completely killed my friend's startup by suspending their accout because they had venezuelans IPs and venezuelan citizenship and aparently they aren't able to check that they (normal citizens) arent the people on the OFAC list, (like 5 names LOL)

So yeah, dont mind me, get your likes, get all the nice advertisiment you want while prettending you are helping and is nothing more than a PR move while messing with normal people with normal lives, struggling everyday but you won't get me as a customer anymore, we are all suppose to be professionals at our tech jobs.