A BBC report says that new transparency requirements in the UK show that Ruja Ignatova, the alleged co-founder of the $4 billion pyramid scheme OneCoin, is the owner of a plush penthouse property in London that was listed for sale.
According to the report, the luxury apartment that was initially listed for $15.49 million was put up for sale by German prosecutors based in Bielefeld, a city in northwest Germany.
Ignatova, who is also known as the “cryptoqueen,” is a Bulgarian-born German national and was last publicly seen in October 2017. Her disappearance coincided with police investigations into the alleged OneCoin scam intensifying.
The BBC says that prior to Ignatova being revealed to be the luxury apartment’s ultimate owner, the property was registered to Aquitaine Group Limited, a Guernsey-based wealth manager. Ignatova’s German lawyer, Martin Breidenbach, is currently facing money laundering charges for facilitating the transfer of $21.7 million to purchase the luxury apartment. The London property was purchased for $16.7 million in 2016.
While the estate agent handling the sale, Knight Frank, could not confirm whether the luxury apartment found a buyer, the report says that it is no longer listed. The property’s price was reduced to $13.6 million at one point, according to the report.
The BBC report comes a little over a month since a co-founder of the OneCoin scheme, Karl Sebastian Greenwood, pleaded guilty to charges of money laundering and wire fraud in the US.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Ignatova was the top decision maker at OneCoin while Greenwood was the leader of scheme’s multi-level marketing (MLM) network.
“Ignatova served as OneCoin’s top leader until her disappearance from public view in October 2017. Greenwood was OneCoin’s ‘global master distributor’ and the leader of the MLM network through which the fraudulent cryptocurrency was marketed and sold.”
Greenwood, who was arrested in 2018 in Thailand, faces a maximum prison sentence of 60 years.
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