Kate Forbes did not delete any of her WhatsApp messages with senior Holyrood ministers and officials until January 2022 when all major COVID decisions had been made, an inquiry heard.
Scotland’s former finance secretary told the UK COVID-19 Inquiry that a junior member of her private office advised her it was Scottish government policy from January 2022 for all messages within the office to be deleted going forward, and she “acquiesced” because she believed it was an instruction.
She said she did not recall the policy applying to anybody else in and around the cabinet or government.
Ms Forbes, SNP MSP for Skye, Badenoch and Lochaber, said she provided her messages to the inquiry “in the spirit of being completely open”.
Use and retention of WhatsApp messages by senior Holyrood ministers and officials has proved contentious, with First Minister Humza Yousaf making an “unreserved” apology for the Scottish government’s “frankly poor” handling of requests from the inquiry for WhatsApp messages to be handed over.
Apologising while giving evidence to the inquiry last week, he said he accepted this would have caused “serious grief and re-trauma” for those who lost loved ones during the pandemic.
The inquiry has already heard how former first minister Nicola Sturgeon and her deputy John Swinney failed to retain their WhatsApp messages, although Ms Sturgeon later said correspondence had been handed over after being saved by recipients.
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Sturgeon called Johnson a ‘clown’
Professor Sir Gregor Smith, Scotland’s chief medical officer, told colleagues to delete WhatsApp messages “at the end of every day”, while national clinical director Professor Jason Leitch described the daily deletion of messages a “pre-bed ritual”.
Questioned further on Tuesday about record retention, Ms Forbes said she was “surprised” to learn that meetings of the Scottish government Resilience Room (SGoRR) and “gold command” group had not been minuted.
She said: “That surprises me, and this would be the first of me hearing it.”
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Jamie Dawson KC, counsel to the inquiry, said: “The reason we think that is the case is we have obviously asked the Scottish government for all of its papers concerning these matters and although we have cabinet minutes, we don’t have minuted records of either of those groups.
“It becomes difficult to understand what the ultimate decision-making process was when there is no record of how those decisions were taken.”
Ms Forbes responded: “I can understand that frustration.”
Ms Forbes said she was unaware of the gold command group’s existence until she was invited in 2021.
Inquiry chair Lady Hallett asked Ms Forbes: “Given your seniority in the Scottish government, why weren’t you at the command meetings in 2020?”
Ms Forbes said: “I wasn’t aware. I am not even sure I was aware they existed.”
Lady Hallett said: “You would have expected to be invited, wouldn’t you?”
Ms Forbes replied: “I would have expected to be invited to any meeting where there were significant financial implications.”
She also told the inquiry she could not recall being aware of epidemiological evidence about coronavirus available to the Scottish government when she became finance secretary in February 2020.
The MSP also said she could not recall anything relating to COVID being in the budget she presented to parliament on 6 February 2020, that had been prepared by her predecessor Derek Mackay.
The inquiry, which is currently sitting in Edinburgh, continues.
Braden John Karony, the CEO of crypto firm SafeMoon, has cited the US Department of Justice’s directive to no longer pursue some crypto charges in an effort to get the case against him and his firm dismissed.
In an April 9 letter to New York federal court judge Eric Komitee, Karony’s attorney, Nicholas Smith, said the court should consider an April 7 memo from US Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche that disbanded the DOJ’s crypto unit.
“The Department of Justice is not a digital assets regulator,” Blanche said in the memo, which added the DOJ “will no longer pursue litigation or enforcement actions that have the effect of superimposing regulatory frameworks on digital assets.”
Blanche also directed prosecutors not to charge violations of securities and commodities laws when the case would require the DOJ to determine if a digital asset is a security or commodity when charges such as wire fraud are available.
An excerpt of the letter Karony sent to Judge Komitee. Source: PACER
In the footnote of the letter, Karony’s counsel wrote an exemption to the DOJ’s new directive would be if the parties have an interest in defending that a crypto asset is a security, but added that “Karony does not have such an interest.”
The Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission filed simultaneous charges of securities violations, wire fraud, and money laundering against Karony and other SafeMoon executives in November 2023.
The government alleged Karony, SafeMoon creator Kyle Nagy and chief technology officer Thomas Smith withdrew assets worth $200 million from the project and misappropriated investor funds.
Another attempt to nix the case
The letter is Karony’s latest attempt to get the case thrown out. In February, he asked that his trial, scheduled to begin on March 31, be delayed as he argued President Donald Trump’s proposed crypto policies could potentially affect the case.
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Later in February, Smith changed his plea to guilty and said he took part in the alleged $200 million crypto fraud scheme. Nagy is at large and is believed to be in Russia.
SafeMoon filed for bankruptcy in December 2023, a month after it was hit with twin cases from the SEC and DOJ. It was also hacked in March 2023, with the hacker agreeing to return 80% of the funds.
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Ukraine’s financial regulator has proposed taxing certain crypto transactions as personal income at a rate of up to 23% but excluding crypto-to-crypto transactions and stablecoins.
Crypto transactions would be taxed at 18% with a 5% military levy on top as part of the proposed framework, released on April 8 by Ukraine’s National Securities and Stock Market Commission.
NSSMC Chairman Ruslan Magomedov said in an April 8 statement that “the issue of crypto taxes is not a hypothesis, but a reality that is fast approaching.”
He added that the agency created the framework to help lawmakers make an “informed resolution” by considering each suggestion’s advantages and disadvantages because “these aspects can have a critical impact on the market and tax liability.”
Under the NSSMC’s proposed crypto framework, a tax will be applied when crypto is cashed out for fiat currency or exchanged for goods or services.
Crypto-to-crypto transactions wouldn’t be taxed, bringing Ukraine in line with other European countries, including Austria and France, as well as crypto-friendly jurisdictions like Singapore, the NSSMC said.
The regulator says it “makes sense” to exclude stablecoins backed by foreign currencies or only apply a 5% or 9% tax because Ukraine’s tax code already excludes income from transactions in “foreign exchange values.”
A translated excerpt of the NSSMC’s report said stablecoins backed by foreign currencies could be exempt from taxation. Source: NSSMC
Mining, staking, hard forks and airdrops
Other crypto-related activities, such as mining, staking and airdrops, are also addressed in the framework which floated a few options for taxation.
The NSSMC said crypto mining is generally considered a business activity, but there might be a general tax-free limit for certain crypto transactions, including mining.
Under the framework, staking could be considered as “business captive income” or only taxed if the crypto is cashed out for fiat currencies. While hard forks and airdrops could be taxed either as ordinary income or when the tokens are cashed.
Related: Ukraine officials get training on crypto and virtual assets investigation
The regulator suggests a tax-free threshold could help “relieve the burden on small investors” and is common in other jurisdictions.
Exemptions for donations, transfers between family members, and holders who keep their crypto for a set amount of time are also flagged as possibilities. However, the NSSMC says the exemption might not apply to non-custodial crypto wallets.
Last December, Daniil Getmantsev, head of the tax committee of Ukraine’s parliament, said a draft bill to legalize cryptocurrencies was under review and expected to be finalized early this year.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy first signed a law establishing a legal framework for the country to operate a regulated crypto market in March 2022.
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Digital asset manager 21Shares has filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to launch a spot Dogecoin exchange-traded fund, following similar filings from rivals Bitwise and Grayscale.
The 21Shares Dogecoin ETF would seek to track the price of the memecoin Dogecoin (DOGE), according to the firm’s April 9 Form S-1 registration statement. The Dogecoin Foundation’s corporate arm, House of Doge, plans to assist 21Shares with marketing the fund.
21Shares said Coinbase Custody would be the proposed custodian of its Dogecoin ETF but did not specify a fee, ticker or what stock exchange it would list on.
Source: James Seyffart
21Shares must also file a 19b-4 filing with the SEC to kickstart the regulator’s approval process for the fund.
DOGE currently has a $24.2 billion market cap and is the eighth-largest cryptocurrency by value. It was created in 2013 as a joke and is a fork of Lucky Coin, which itself is a fork of Bitcoin.
21Shares’ proposed Dogecoin ETF is the company’s latest effort to expand its spot crypto ETF offerings, which currently includes only a spot Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) fund.
The issuer also filed with the SEC in February to launch a spot Polkadot (DOT) ETF and last year, it filed to create a spot XRP (XRP) ETF.
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The recent surge in crypto ETF filings reflects a “spaghetti cannon approach” from issuers testing which products the new SEC leadership might approve, Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart said in February.
“Issuers will try to launch many many different things and see what sticks,” Seyffart said.
Seyffart and fellow Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas said in February that there is a 75% chance that the SEC will approve a spot Dogecoin ETF this year, while the betting platform Polymarket currently gives approval odds of 64%.
21Shares and House of Doge partner for DOGE funds in Switzerland
21Shares also said on April 9 that it partnered with House of Doge to launch a fully backed Dogecoin exchange-traded product on Switzerland’s SIX Swiss Exchange.
The 21Shares Dogecoin product will trade under the ticker “DOGE” with a 2.5% fee.
21Shares president Duncan Moir said that Dogecoin “has become more than a cryptocurrency: it represents a cultural and financial movement that continues to drive mainstream adoption, and DOGE offers investors a regulated avenue to be part of this exciting project.”
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