FBI Director Kash Patel failed to timely disclose a six-figure purchase of shares in Strategy (MSTR), the world’s largest publicly traded bitcoin holder, according to a report by nonpartisan news outlet NOTUS.
Patel allegedly bought between $100,001 and $250,000 in MSTR on November 21, but did not report the trade to regulators until May 26.
The reason for the delay? miscommunication. Patel informed the Office of Government Ethics that he “inadvertently omitted” the transaction due to an unspecified “miscommunication.”
Under the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act, senior officials must publicly disclose individual stock trades over $1,000 within 45 days of the transaction.
The trade has come under intense scrutiny from government watchdogs because of the Strategy’s BTC accumulation business and its past dealings with federal agencies.
The company, which according to NOTUS has done millions of dollars in business over the years with the Department of Justice, calls itself a “Bitcoin Treasury Company” and is aggressively accumulating BTC as its primary reserve asset. Since 2020, the company has built a coin hoard of 847,363 BTC, worth over $50 billion at the time of writing.
