FBI Director Kash Patel failed to timely disclose a six-figure purchase of stock in Strategy (MSTR), the world’s largest publicly-listed bitcoin holder, according to a report by nonpartisan news outlet NOTUS.
Patel supposedly purchased between $100,001 and $250,000 worth of MSTR on Nov. 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.”
According to the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act, high-ranking executive branch officials need to publicly disclose individual stock trades over $1,000 within 45 days from the transaction.
The trade has drawn intense scrutiny from government watchdogs due to Strategy’s BTC accumulation business and its previous business with federal agencies.
The company, which according to NOTUS has done millions of dollars in business over the years with the Justice Department, calls itself as a “Bitcoin Treasury Company,” and aggressively accumulates BTC as its primary reserve asset. Since 2020, the company has built a coin stash of 847,363 BTC, worth over $50 billion as of this writing.