A New York Times podcast on tech which touched up on the recent controversies surrounding the world’s largest crypto exchange ended up inadvertently throwing a whole lotta shade straight to Malta’s direction.

Hard Fork is a year-old weekly podcast which sees Kevin Roose and Casey Newton exploring “stories from the bleeding edge of tech”, promising a “look into the future that’s already here”. And when it came to crypto giant Binance, Kevin and Casey definitely weren’t holding back.

“Binance has had a reputation of playing fast and loose with regulators,” Roose says at around the 20th minute on the controversial company which was launched back in 2017 in China. “They famously did not have a headquarters for many years, and when asked where their company was based, they would just sort of change the subject.”

It’s here that industry enthusiasts might’ve seen the Malta reference coming. After all, back in 2018, the crypto trading giant confirmed plans to relocate to Malta from China and Japan, striking an early deal with a Malta-based gaming platform by that summer. The full move came when Binance successfully set up a bank account in Malta, with CEO and founder Changpeng Zhao calling it a “very significant” development before becoming operational in October 2018. One year later, by October 2019, however, a source claiming knowledge of the matter today told Decrypt that Binance informed the government it was “no longer seeking a license on the island”.

Five years later, this May, a special report published by Reuters found that Binance never paid a cent in tax in Malta during its stay on the island, despite processing billions (including payments for criminals and companies evading American sanctions).

“And they were based in Malta for a time,” Roose says, before being interrupted by Newton who quickly chimed in saying, “Huge red flag, huge red flag, to be based in Malta.”

“Yeah, nothing good happens in Malta,” Roose continued, laughing and apologising to “any of our Maltese listeners”.