OneCoin class-action stay lifted, case is back on

9 Comments on “OneCoin class-action stay lifted, case is back on”

#1

Stevie

May 2nd, 2020 at 8:26 pm  Stevie(Q)

Someone please get Kamran Hye’s opinion. He confused the civil and criminal matters and interpreted the speed bump to mean both were likely to fail.



#2

WhistleBlowerFin

May 2nd, 2020 at 9:36 pm  WhistleBlowerFin(Q)

Of course Kamran Hye confused it. You would get more intelligent opinion from a shoe, than from Kamran Hye.



#3

Semjon

May 3rd, 2020 at 5:39 am  Semjon(Q)

I discovered more evidence about OneCoin’s links to organized crime with the help of SDNY court transcripts.

There are descriptiona of money flows out of the funds that Mark S Scott headed. The biggest OneCoin loot recipient was the horse mogul Amer Abdulaziz Salman’s Phoenix fund (€185 million), but the Feds describe money flows to Bulgaria too. Here is the summary:

And then all the way to the right, is in the orange is three transfers that go to Bulgaria, totaling approximately $65 million and that includes Vida Home, LBJAD, and Openmark Bulgaria.

Collectively, Bulgaria in these three accounts received $65 million consisting of eight wires..

(courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.482287/gov.uscourts.nysd.482287.203.0.pdf)

“LBJ AD” (bird.bg/tr?v=view&guid=200140876) is an interesting company because its director TEODOR KRASIMIROV PASTARMADZHIEV, is described as the close associate to the “Cocaine King” Hristoforos “Taki” Amanatidis:

Teodor Pastarmadzhiev is the successor of the executed Vesselin Stoimenov in the tourism business of VIS-2. Pastarmadzhiev is one of the closest to Christoforos Amanatidis-Taki.

(dailypress-bg.com/авер-на-таки-наследи-убития-веселин-ст/)

The Feds have described drug lord Taki as the head of security of OneCoin and having a role in Ruja’s disappearance:

The last thing I’ll mention in terms of dangerousness was that, according to our investigation, we do believe that the defendant is directly associated with significant players in Eastern European organized crime.

The head of security at OneCoin is a large-scale international drug trafficker, and it’s actually that same head of security that was involved in the disappearance of the defendant’s sister when she absconded from the filed charges in her case, and we know he knows and talks to the head of security because his — that phone number was recovered from the phone of defendant.

(courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.516497/gov.uscourts.nysd.516497.90.0.pdf)

[OneCoin affiliated Bulgarian company “Pro Dial” (bird.bg/tr?v=view&guid=203186715) has been mentioned in a criminal scheme called GPGate(bivol.bg/en/gpgate-cash-offshores-political-parties-russian-oligarchs-and-alleged-drug-lords-wife.html ) that allegedly has Taki’s fingerprints too.

Pro Dial had RISG Limited (RujaIgnatovSebastianGreenwood) as an owner and Veska Ignatov as a manager, along with Taki’s girlfriend Boryana Shehtova.

Another OneCoin company “Elmaz Proparti”(bird.bg/tr?v=view&guid=203923120) — which owns the OneCoin Sofia head office — is also linked to the GPGate schme through Lukoil lawyer Velizar Radev and his company GP Hold. ]

The LBJ AD of Taki’s trusted man got 6 million euros from Ruja/Scott, and the transfer happened right after OneCoin’s head-of-almost-everything Frank Schneider (Chelgate/Sandstone associate) had started to re-organize Ruja’s money laundering operations, by bringing in a fellow Luxemburgian Karl Horsburg (who summerised aptly the existing criminal scheme):

If we can just scroll down on 1434 to that bottom e-mail including it says on December 16, December 2016, from Karl Horsburgh.

Q. Special Agent Kroll, can you read that e-mail aloud.

A. “I have reviewed our conversation and the corporatestructure y ou gave me and have come up with the following conclusions: MSS International Consultants BVI Limited.

MSS is the general partner in five Fenero Limited partnerships which in turn contain exclusively RI’s money. MSS also has the relationships with the banks that currently run the bank accounts for the partnerships.

MSS also is the shareholder of Fenero Equity Investments Ireland Limited which in turn ownsthree other Irish companies, Fenero Tradenext which is dormant, Fenero PCT which issues a credit card, and Fenero Securities which is in the process of opening brokerage accounts for Anton and Ivan to allow them to trade on stock exchanges.

All of this has been financed by RI. Our problem is that RI cannot appear as the UBO of the structure, and any change in the structure could cause the banks to close bank accounts if they were to find out about RI. However, RI would like to ensure that her ownership of this structure is formalized and secured.”

You can pause there. Mr. Barile, if we can just scroll upwards in this e-mail chain to the next e-mail directly above it.

Q. What was Ruja’s response?

A. “Gentlemen, please do not copy me on e-mails like this. We discuss better personally or over the phone. R.”

Q. And who is included on this e-mail chain?

A. MSScott[@]MSICBVI.com, Frank[@]sandstone.lu and KarlHorsburgh[@]gmail.com.

MR. FOLLY: If we go back to the timeline briefly, to 12/21/2016. Fenero Equity Investments Ireland account at Bank of Ireland sends 6 million euros to LBJ AD at InvestBank in Bulgaria.

(p. 1247; courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.482287/gov.uscourts.nysd.482287.199.0.pdf)

Around January-Februay 2017, a Bulgarian company called Openmark EOOD received a whopping €52 million from Ruja/Scott:

After that, Fenero Equity Investments account at Bank of Ireland Fenero Financial Switzerland LP account at DMS Bankin Cayman Islands and Fenero Securities Trading Limited account at Bank of Ireland send 51,696,000 euros to openmark at InvestBank in Bulgaria.

(courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.482287/gov.uscourts.nysd.482287.199.0.pdf)

Openmark(bird.bg/tr?v=view&guid=201316875 ; beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/03766200/persons-with-significant-control) is a company of Bulgarian tobacco lord Hristo Latchev, a former Bulgartabac CEO, who owns several tobacco companies in UAE, Bulgaria and elsewhere.

Bulgartabac has been notorious for its corruption, and its background figures — who include the current prime minister Boyko Borisov — have been accused of being involved in terrorist financing and cigarette smuggling (bivol.bg/en/letter-to-the-us-embassy-exposes-bulgartabac-scheme-featuring-boyko-borisov-ahmed-dogan-and-delyan-peevski.html) via that company.

Even Latchev has been alleged to have been involved in this “Bulgartabac mafia” through a company called Caledon Invest –> bivol.bg/en/middle-east-distributors-of-bulgarian-tobacco-maker-are-outlawed.html. Taki is probably not far away from these Bulgartabac figures either because in one of the articles I linked above, it’s said:

“There are a number of reports that Amanatidis is currently in Dubai, where he often spends time in the company of Delyan Peevski.”

Later in 2017, after having received the treasure from Ruja, Latchev went to Greece to buy himself another tobacco company (with the OneCoin money?):

businessnews.gr/el/epixeiriseis/lianemporio-fmcg/neos-paihtis-stin-elliniki-agora-kapnikon.html

Curiously, Real Tobacco SA that Latchev bought has a Greek politician Christos Folias as a principal.

So quite interesting where the OneCoin money from Mark Scott’s ended up…



#4

Oz

May 3rd, 2020 at 8:02 am  Oz(Q)

I keep meaning to get back to the transcripts. They’re sitting there and I just need to find the time.

COVID-19 has increased my workload it feels like, so I never get around to it 🙁

Can’t complain though given a lot of people’s employment situation. I suppose I’m one of the lucky ones.



#5

Semjon

May 3rd, 2020 at 7:15 pm  Semjon(Q)

The problem with the transcript is that it’s massive body of text that’s difficult to read/process — especially without the exhibits. It’s full of boring details about money transfers, readings of emails etc. without much context and explanation.

I think you have alredy covered most of the “low hanging fruits”. Rest of it is largely raw material for hard investigative work.

(The jackpot is for the one who cracks the Ruja’s 100 M Venezualan state oil company reference. 😉 )

Here is my summary on the money flows to help see the big picture.

OneCoin companies (IMS, Star Merchant, B and N Consult, Fates) fed Fenero funds 354 M EUR + 10 M USD (during May-October 2016).

I got the following when tried to parse how the money flowed out:

* 10 M USD was sent to Fates

* 185 M EUR sent to Phoenix Fund Investments

* 65 M EUR sent to Bulgaria (Openmark EOOD, LBJ AD, Vida Homes)

* 3.25 M EUR sent to Oceanscape Ventures

* 30 M EUR sent for the Barta/CryptoReal deal

* 7.3 M EUR sent for the PCT Card investment

* 52 M EUR ended up to Mark S Scott (not sure if the 1 M EUR “legal escrow” is inlcuded)

(* 30 M EUR was sent to Cowen International and 10 M EUR to IG Markets investment firms, but the monies were returned back to Fenero/MSSI accounts with small profit. They are probably included in the money in tranfers above)

–> about 10-11 M EUR is missing. Scott had emptied & closed all funds by September 2017, with the exception of 1+ M EUR he held himself for possible legal & other expenses.

Some loans were mentioned in passing and there was 3.6 M EUR money return or the 10 M EUR IG
Markets money that I’m not sure how to account, so perhaps these cover the difference (or some other more obvious mistake I made).

But I guess it’s also possible that the transcripts don’t provide full picture of the Scott’s money laundering for OneCoin.

There is at least the Fenero Malta entity (offshoreleaks.icij.org/nodes/55077798 ), which I think wasn’t mentioned at all in the court transcipts. Impossible that the Feds would have missed it.

Perhaps Fenero Malta is the (possibly) missing ca. 10 M EUR, that’s included in the total sum (and on Ms. October’s charts which we don’t have access to) but the Feds didn’t want to give any attention in court.

Or perhaps the Fenero Malta is an indication that Mark S Scott laundered much more money for OneCoin than the often cited $400 million.

Scott’s defense used obstructionist legal tactics — putting Scott’s less prestigious lawyer Mr. Garvin to do the dirty work of foolishly arguing “black letter law” in bad faith — which prevented the prosecutors accessing the trove of seized materials until very late in the process.

Perhaps this is also why the prosecutors added the bank fraud charge against Scott at the eleventh hour.

So perhaps the prosecutors just didn’t have the time to prepare for the other aspects of Scott’s money laundering, and the court proceedings dealt largely with what they already knew, without relying much on the seized material. (E.g They mentioned Scott’s money laundering he did while on bail with his lawyer James Nobles only in passing, and it wasn’t formally included in the case.)

The Feds could also have visibility issues and/or their work is still very much ongoing due to the above mentioned obstruction, when they — by the trial — had maanged to track and trace only about half of 50+ million Mark Scott got from Ruja…



#6

Semjon

Jun 20th, 2020 at 4:27 pm  Semjon(Q)

Apparently, Konstantin Ignatov is negotiating a settlement with the CA Plaintiffs:

Dear Judge Caproni:

I am writing on behalf of defendant Konstantin Ignatov to respectfully request a three week extension of time in which to file Mr. Ignatov’s answer to the amended complaint and any motions, which are presently due on June 25.

This is Mr. Ignatov’s first request for an extension of time.

The reason for this request is that we are actively engaged in settlement negotiations with the plaintiffs in this matter, which may obviate the need for Mr. Ignatov’s responsive pleadings.

(courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.515064/gov.uscourts.nysd.515064.105.0.pdf)



#7

Oz

Jun 20th, 2020 at 11:38 pm  Oz(Q)

Given disgorgement as part of his own plea, I wonder what he’ll bring to the table.



#8

Semjon

Jul 19th, 2020 at 8:15 pm  Semjon(Q)

In case there was any doubt about what happened to Konstantin Ignatov after the BOP records showed “released” status for him:

This is Mr. Ignatov’s second request for an extension of time, and it would permit Mr. Ignatov and plaintiffs to continue their progressing settlement negotiations, which in turn would obviate the need for Mr. Ignatov’s responsive pleadings.

Additionally, Mr. Ignatov is presently incarcerated, rendering attorney-client communications more difficult due to the ongoing public health crisis and slowing our efforts to res.9lve this case.

(courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.515064/gov.uscourts.nysd.515064.113.0_1.pdf)

I think reaching a settlement with the victims of the fraud he personally figureheaded may serve his interests in the upcoming sentencing of his federal criminal case.

He can use the reached settlement as one of the reasons to argue before the judge that he has been a good boy, and get even bigger sentence reduction.

It’s perhaps also good news for Konstantin that his sentencing date got postponed again for it looks a little bit like the Feds are looking to give him another snitching gig — this time against Sebastian Greenwood. The more valuable he is to the Government, the more he’ll likely get his sentence reduced.



#9

Oz

Jul 20th, 2020 at 8:09 am  Oz(Q)

Wonder where they’re keeping him…