OneCoin lawyers bullied UK authorities into cowardice
In September 2016 the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority revealed OneCoin was under investigation.
The investigation was headed up by City of London police.
Ten months after the FCA’s OneCoin warning was published, it disappeared from the regulator’s website.
To date there has never been an explanation as to why.
In episode 9 of the BBC’s The Missing Cryptoqueen podcast, Jamie Bartlett reveals OneCoin had the warning removed by threatening the FCA with legal action.
As revealed in The Missing Cryptoqueen by Gary Gilford, a lawyer who worked for Ignatova,
[22:28] At the time, when I think Carter-Ruck and Chelgate were involved, the Financial Conduct Authority put out a warning on their website, about anyone doing business with OneCoin and OneLife.
So Carter-Ruck and Chelgate were writing to the Financial Conduct Authority.
Whatever they did, was convincing enough for the FCA to take the (OneCoin) notice down.
Carter-Ruck are a well-known London based law firm. Chelgate are a PR and crisis management firm, also based in London.
In an effort to get to the bottom of communication between between Carter-Ruck, Chelgate and the FCA, The Missing Cryptoqueen interviews Simon Harris, a former Chelgate employee.
Harris claims Chelgate maintained a degree of separation from OneCoin, by dealing on with Frank Schneider.
Schneider, a former Luxembourg spy, worked closely with Ignatova on the more secretive aspects of OneCoin’s day to day operations.
OneCoin was purportedly paying Chelgate over £40,000 GBP a month as a retainer.
As recounted by Harris;
[24:42] In the weeks prior to my arrival (at Chelgate) on August 2017, there was a warning on the … FCA’s website.
And Chelgate worked with Carter-Ruck to pressurize (the FCA), to weaken their public stance on OneCoin.
Harris claims Ignatova and Schneider were “absolutely delighted” at the FCA backing down.
OneCoin went on to use the FCA’s impotence as a marketing point, to further the fictional narrative that OneCoin was legitimate.
The Missing Cryptoqueen quotes Ken Labine, a Canadian based OneCoin promoter, boasting about the FCA’s decision to back down.
[26:34] If they (the FCA) still thought we were a fraudulent company, OneCoin, then guess what; that warning’s not removed. Game over.
In response to OneCoin and its promoters pushing the narrative that they had received regulatory approval in the UK, the FCA and City of London police did nothing.
To date the FCA has failed to explain how pressure from a law firm and PR agency was enough to get it to remove a warning, pertaining to quite possibly one of the largest Ponzi schemes in history.
In a recent pre-trial conference for Sebastian Greenwood, OneCoin’s indicted second in command, a defense attorney claimed OneCoin was a fifteen billion dollar Ponzi scheme.
The City of London police investigation into OneCoin was officially dropped in September 2019.
A letter from Keiron Vaughan, of the Economic Crime Director, informed the OneCoin “investigation will be closed and no further action will be taken”.
Three years of investigating a multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme had led nowhere.
Owing to the failure of UK authorities, OneCoin subsequently flourished.
In the wake of the company’s collapse, UK investor losses are believed to run into the millions.
The BBC attempted to gain access to correspondence between the FCA, Carter-Ruck and Chelgate through a Freedom of Information request.
The FCA refused to provide anything. In response to the BBC’s enquiries, the regulator stated;
We can neither confirm nor deny the existence of these documents.
We published the consumer notice in 2016 at the request of the City of London police.
The decision to take our alert down was made in conjunction with the City of London police, who were investigating the matter.
Our alerts are primarily intended to warn consumers about firms carrying on regulated activities without the required FCA authorization.
It did not appear that OneCoin was carrying on any activities that required FCA authorization.
The FCA does not regulate cryptocurrency assets, and therefore it could not take this matter further.
Something the FCA very much does regulate is securities fraud, which OneCoin committed in the UK since its inception in 2014.
At no time during its operation was OneCoin registered with the FCA.
The BBC has filed an appeal over their denied Freedom of Information request.
Here at BehindMLM we are no stranger to the incompetence of UK authorities.
We’ll be sure to bring up the FCA’s OneCoin debacle any time someone asserts the UK is a strongly regulated market.
Imagine being the top financial regulator for the sixth largest GDP market in the world, and taking down a multi-billion dollar Ponzi fraud warning because lawyers sent some threatening letters.
What a disgrace.
Chelgate is a member of the PR industry self-regulating authority.
Perhaps the BBC should ask the Association how it views Chelgate’s actions in the light of its much vaunted code of conduct. FIFTEEN BILLION!
I imagine if they Association dared take any action Chelgate would just get Carter-Ruck to send them some angry letters, and that’d be that.
Seems to be how regulation works in the UK.
The injured parties should ask themselves whether it would not be possible to take action against the state authorities (e.g. in Great Britain, Germany, etc.).
Because of their inability to identify a 14 billion dollar fraud and to act against the carriers.
It seems that smaller states have more capable officials! Many of these have been quick to issue bans or warnings against the OneCoin fraud.
Hi, sorry if I intrude, I state that the onelife / onecoin story intrigues me and touches me closely because my sister is affiliated with this network.
now I consider the blockchain and crypto to be useful innovations, but which in my opinion are inflating and bringing at the limit like the subprime in 2008.
defining tokens and crypto as gold is a bestiality because gold is a tangible and finite material (the philosopher’s stone does not exist) and tokens and crypto can be created by the tons.
Let’s go back to onecoin; my sister doesn’t want to tell me anything because she knows I’m skeptical about it, but from what I see dealshaker works well (let’s say that the taxation on the companies they sell is not clear to me and if onecoin is not convertible the currency i one is virtual).
the backoffice has never shown it to me, but occasionally mentions credits in gold and bitcoin (???), and the bosses made him make a wirex (or wired?) card to be connected to the backoffice.
I state that they were smart because they do not sell you tokens directly but training courses, the tokens give them to you, and then they continue to change the top management, behind the organization there is someone really big (if not even a state).
go to (Ozedit: spam removed) and you will see how they have worked to create a network of smart contracts since the end of 2019 (coincidentally the dates of the process to constantin, repeatedly postponed, why?), according to you the authorities are doing what they are doing.
Your sister is in a Ponzi scheme and unless she’s scammed a bunch of victims she’s lost her money.
This is called pseudo-compliance. OneCoin only ever sold tokens. In an attempt at pseudo-compliance they bundled PDF files with token investment.
Didn’t fool us. Didn’t fool the DOJ and shouldn’t fool you.
Yeah, none of that has anything to do with OneCoin being a Ponzi scheme.
Konstantin’s dates have been pushed due to his ongoing cooperation with the DOJ. Sorry for your sister’s loss.
But here in Italy, despite the consob banning and fining onelife / onecoin, they are operational more than ever, I myself have asked the authorities and wrote to the financial police but nothing.
Now they told him (my sister) that the exchange will start soon (story already heard), before the covid they did a mega expo in Verona and there was also the financial police but they did nothing.
they are moving on thread of regularity, for what I say they are smart, and it is not true that the ONEs are not spendable, they can be spent within the network, then I don’t know what companies do with this pseudo crypto.
The authorities blocked the EU sites, but coincidentally they continued to operate via cloudflare and vpn.
In my opinion they are not prosecutable (if you pursue all the ponzi schemes you want, to try half the world, and because of the black funds “who is without sin cast the first stone”, for that the authorities let go, the defense lawyers can make leverages the rot that afflicts 90% of companies and governments), the only weapon to eradicate these scams is for people to wake up.
I can’t speak for regulation in general but when it comes to Ponzi schemes the UK and EU have an enforcement problem.
So many warnings, no action.
Whatever regulatory framework exists within these two jurisdictions is dysfunctional. OneCoin made a mockery of both EU and UK regulation of multi-billion dollar scams.
The worst part is nothing was learnt and things haven’t improved. Another OneCoin could come along (plenty of smaller scale clone scams exist), and we’d have the same half a decade of “sorry for your loss” unless the US took interest.
As far as the UK, their “enforcement” of fraud has been the laughingstock of the internet for two decades.
Serial Ponzi promoters like Simon Stepsys and Sharon James have marketed SCAMS there with impunity for years.
It’s a no-brainer as to why we never see them posting photos of themselves vacationing in the USA.
SD
@Nik, try finding something you want from Dealshaker. You would be extremely lucky to 1. find such thing listed and 2. got it using onecoins so that you don’t have to pay the euro part over the market price.
Dealshaker is a very low traffic site, only having 25k visitors a day. Hell, BehindMLM has 100k visitors a day, 4 times more than Dealshaker.. Anybody calling Dealshaker good is delusional.
hypestat.com/compare/behindmlm.com/dealshaker.com
Particularly London Police (and potentially the entire UK’s other regulatory body) has been overrun by globalists, spineless cowards etc who have unofficially created special protections for certain groups of people.
The most protected special group is muslims. So here is a possible version of what might be the case: If there are a lot of muslims, or people who come from countries where islam is wide-spread, involved in onecoin, then it wouldn’t surprise me that the scammers are using ”oppressed muslim” card and are getting away with this because the thing that London police fears the most is being accused of racism or ”oppressing” muslims in any way, shape or form.
Don’t believe me? Do your own research on this.
Hint: research what is happening with so called ”grooming gangs” (rape gangs) and what is the ethnicity of those gangs and how are they getting away en masse from authorities because the damn authorities are afraid of being accused of racism. It is a well known scandal.
And BTW, their entire argument of racism against muslims is BS because islam is not a race, but a religion (at best) and I dont even call it a religion – I call it ideology.
@John Smith: A very poorly argued case and just an excuse to have a pop at Muslim’s.
No-one who’s studied this case believes it’s driven by any religion; it’s simply driven by criminal greed. Those from a religious background are far more likely to be the victims here.
To suggest the FCA/Police took down the notice because of fear of offending Muslims makes zero sense.
Oh, BTW, I’m an atheist and have no time for any organised religion (in case you were wondering). I do, however, believe people have the right to believe any fairy stories they like and not be persecuted for it.
Okay, let’s leave out politics and ideologies, and let’s also assume that all governments regularize (bad word) these ponzi schemes and their pseudo tokens, but what I want to understand is what impact all these cryptocurrencies (regular and pseudo) can have on the real economy?
I repeat, crypto (and blockchain) are a beautiful invention, but in my opinion totally disconnected from the economy, who goes to work more if with two tokens (and all the split multipliers) you become a billionaire, and if they take over the currency of state who then governs the nation ……… the corporations, bitcoinlandia, ethereumlandia ?
Now, ecologically bitcoin is a crazy bestiality, I made an estimate using the yield of the first 5 asicminers, and it turns out that to keep the network on the consumption is 3500 Mwh, and I have not calculated the subsidiary systems (management, cooling, etc. .), all to obviate the average inflation rate or transaction costs that I estimate at 3%, and to have what a database string, madness.
The above discussion applies to crypto “series”, imagine the “bins” to onecoin.
@Nik – this is a one coin thread so it’s pointless embarking on a discussion on the implications of cryptocurrency (regular or pseudo). The reason being is that one coin is not a crypto currency of any description, there is no coin.
If you want to send me $10,000 then I’ll mark you down as having bought 1,000 Bob-Coin (my own crypto currency I’ve just this second launched). I’ve recorded your purchase in a database and published a value for each Bob Coin as $20.
Look at that, you’ve just doubled your money Nik and I personally guarantee that your Bob Coin will have the same exchangecrate as one coin when it’s public exchange opens.
Also when the one coin exchange opens, each Bob Coin owners receives an additional $1,000!
Very little. The vast, vast majority of the population are not interested in trying to get rich quick via money games.
The tiny minority that are still account for a good few billion dollars of wealth, and it’s easy to get the mistaken impression that this matters if you immerse yourself in that world.
Kind of answers your own question. What’s the point of being a billionaire if there’s nothing to buy with your billions because everyone is sitting at a computer trading made up points with each other instead of doing work with external value?
As regards OneCoin and mining. It just never happened. We know this from the DoJ papers. We also know this because nobody has ever seen the servers. And the fact that Bulgaria’s electricity consumption didn’t jump when victims started believing their tokens were being mined.
Anyone seriously thinking the City of London police didn’t act because of a bias in favour of Muslims has their tinfoil hat on too tight btw. English justice and society just happen to loaded in such a way that rich and evil people can buy their way to the top.
There is a simultaneous argument that the police didn’t do anything because a disproportionate number of UK victims (like nearly all of them) happen to be from minorities. Both can’t be right but both can be wrong
More details on the race horse fiasco and Phoenix:
bloodhorse.com/horse-racing/articles/242755/ludt-cuts-ties-with-phoenix-thoroughbreds
I’m not sure if this will make your ears bleed more than your eyes, but rumor has it that 50% of people who watch this will never fully recover. W.T.A.F.?
youtu.be/cthZ8TdCDFU
deegeetal assets everyvheeeere!
Yeah I’m out, that’s all I could stomach. Rather listen to a 12 hours of Ken Labine.
Just when you think they can’t sink lower they abuse kids by including them in the scheme. Disgusting.
Great News from Thailand! I am informed from a contact that a Onecoin case has just returned a verdict that Onecoin is a Ponzi scheme in his country (“duh”, but excellent nonetheless).
According to a fellow OC scam buster there, the decision was announced today, but the official documents will be published in 15 days. Stay tuned, I guess!
There’s also a OneCoin book coming…
thebookseller.com/news/ebury-press-publish-book-based-jamie-bartlett-s-bbc-podcast-missing-cryptoqueen-1214253
One Coin’s ‘success’ was its cult like belief that money would be made.
Isn’t this the case with most ponzi schemes?
When I share a link from this site about why their latest scheme is a scam, people always come back with the accusation that Oz is a hater of people being successful – it appears to be a cult like response.
Perhaps they are being indoctrinated to write that?
Keep up the great work, Oz.
It appears tha FCA’s OneCoin debacle doesn’t stop with the warning removal.
In December 2019, therefore after Mark S Scott’s guilty verdict, Max von Arnim — a key money launderer for Ruja Ignatova — got FCA approval to operate as Money Laundering Reporting Officer. I kid you not:
register.fca.org.uk/s/individual?id=003b000000LVz2VAAT
UK authorities were certainly aware of his role in OneCoin, but decided to green-light Max anyway. Same with his current employer Fjord Capital/Fjord Advisors Limited, which even seems to have promoted Max to more senior AML/compliance position after his Ravenr work.
So Fjord Capital saw Max’ work for Ruja impressive and laudable. Tells volumes about the company.
But, alas, Maximillian is not too proud of his OneCoin affiliaton, for he doesn’t want to mention it on his bio Fjord Capital Partners Ltd:
(fjordcap.com/Investing/Max)
It’s indeed the same guy who can be seen in this OneCoin Sofia office grand opening video at at 0:53 timemark with other Ravenr folk:
youtube.com/watch?v=cVWcfDF4B2w
[Joanna Allinson the woman in red jacket? + Viktor Rashev at the table with Ruja at 1:40 timemark + Irina Dilkinska at 1:27 timemarlk]
In this 2016 OneCoin Christmas party video Max can be seen at 1:27 timemark next to former OneCoin CEO Pablo Munoz:
youtube.com/watch?v=RaeYvmuLdbs
We learned from the SDNY trial that Max worked with Ruja’s henchmen such Mark Scott and Viktor Rashev (a Bulgarian mob lawyer associated with “Cocaine King” Taki’s folk):
(p. 56 , courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.482287/gov.uscourts.nysd.482287.189.0.pdf)
Apparently, Mr. von Arnim even worked to arrange a 100 million oil deal with PDVAS (Venezuelan state oil company) to launder OneCoin criminal proceeds for Ruja:
(p. 83 , https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.482287/gov.uscourts.nysd.482287.199.0.pdf)
I wonder is this the “large-scale energy project of an investee company” that Max boasted about in his bio. 😉
Max knew that the work he was doing for Ruja was dirty, for Mark S Scott — of all people — was telling him how radioactive OneCoin links are:
(p. 98-99 , courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.482287/gov.uscourts.nysd.482287.205.0.pdf)
So the FCA has approved a money launder for money laundering compliance.
What on Earth is going on over there?
And Semjon how did this even come up? Great catch!
I guess Boris Johnsson’s administration tries to keep up with the one of Trump.
Not a politic statement just the fact that not all of Trump’s moves can be categorized as sane neither, and Bris is for sure his best friend and copycat.
Anyone have any letters by Carter-Ruck besides the July 8, 2016 one. I’d be interested in hearing from you.