Chivo Wallet, the official Bitcoin wallet of the Salvadoran government, has been operating without presenting any of its financial balances to the National Registry Center (CNR). While Chivo is a private company managed by El Salvador’s government and is not legally required to disclose its activities, it has failed to file its balances annually as every private company must.
El Salvador’s Chivo Wallet Has Not Presented Any Financial Balances Since Its Creation
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Chivo Wallet Has Not Filed Financial Balances in Three Years
Salvadoran journalists have found that Chivo Wallet has been operating without disclosing its financial standings since its creation. A report prepared by Moises Alvarado, a Salvadoran investigative journalist, shed light on the operations of the publicly funded but privately operated Chivo Wallet, revealing that the company had not filed any financial statements since its origin in August 2021.
The wallet was created as one of the tools President Nayib Bukele used to introduce and try to popularize bitcoin as a payment and savings option in El Salvador. As part of this push, Bukele offered an airdrop of $30 to every citizen to complete Know Your Customer (KYC) procedures to use the wallet in September 2021.
While Chivo Wallet is not a public company, and citizens cannot require its financial movements by law, the company did have to file its yearly financial standings to an institution called the Registry National Center (CNR). Alvarado’s research found that Chivo has failed to do this three times in each of the three years of its activity, raising doubts about its operations and balances.
Chivo Wallet’s lack of transparency raises questions on how authorities will deal with the finance disclosure of other projects, like the so-called volcano bonds, which according to national sources will be issued soon.
Cristosal, a Salvadoran nonprofit human rights organization, has moved against Bukele’s government regarding this lack of transparency on its bitcoin endeavors. Related to Chivo, it introduced a lawsuit linked to the identity theft suffered by over 200 Salvadorans registering their data to Chivo’s system.
Chivo Wallet has also been linked to a leak of the personal data of over 5 million Salvadorans. Nonetheless, the wallet disregarded this connection at that time, stating that its security had not been breached.
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