In the 2021 Q1 disclosure forms filled on the 20th of April, the enormous lobbying program by Facebook continued its puzzling and confusing work around the policies of blockchain. Meanwhile, it seems the Diem Association has ended its efforts of lobbying in the United States Capital, Washington DC.
The Diem Association registered in Switzerland (previously called Libra) has filed disclosures that are quite complicated for typical firms outside the United States. These disclosures are of a lobbying contract with legal firms like Arps, Meagher, Slate, Skadden and Flom.
At the end of 2020, every lobbying activity by the Diem Association was terminated, and there were no new ones which mean that more than $10,000 should not be spent per quarter on lobbying activities.
This lobbying is even though the project that was unveiled and bootstrapped by Facebook in 2019 has attracted so much level of scrutiny by the regulatory bodies. The hiring of Diem in the previous year has been talents around the regulators in the U.S. with their focus on solving the lingering issues on KYC and anti-money laundering policies.
KYC Protocol not Certain
As of 2020 Q4, the team at Diem association hoped they would launch the project later in the month of January, but ever since that proved abortive, there has been no news on the project. As at the time of putting this article together, every request for comment was denied by Diem.
The point person on the old lobbying contract of Diem Association, John Mannion, spoke with a crypto blog that he could not ascertain who is or will be a client although the lobbying disclosures aim to ascertain the kind of information needed to the public.
The involvement of Facebook with the Diem Association has been quite controversial from the inception of the project and is already subjected to intense criticism for how it approaches the data of customers on the social media network.
Currently, the lobbying activities of Facebook continue, and it is no shocking news that the highest spender on lobbying is Facebook. Remarkable is its contract with the lobbying firm, FS Vector.
