‘CryptoQueen’s’ Guernsey property companies hit by asset freeze.

Ruja Ignatova, known as the Missing CryptoQueen, is now subject to a global freezing order which prevents her assets from being sold or moved.

The freezing order, made public on Wednesday at London’s High Court, is part of a group action brought by more than 400 OneCoin investors. It is spearheaded by Jennifer McAdam, who said she and her friends and family lost more than £200,000 in the OneCoin scam. In the UK alone, the BBC estimates OneCoin investors lost more than £100m.

THE FREEZING ORDER

The freezing order targets not only Ms Ignatova but seven other people and four companies—all alleged to have been connected with OneCoin in some form.

GUERNSEY

Two Guernsey companies, also subject to the freeze, were used by Miss Ignatova, as the BBC revealed in 2021, to purchase a

• £13.5m Kensington penthouse and
• £1.9m apartment in the same building for her bodyguards.

INDIVIDUALS

They include.

• OneCoin’s co-founder, Sebastian Greenwood, who is in a US prison serving a 20-year sentence for his role in the fraud.
• British businessmen Christopher Hamilton and Robert MacDonald
• US authorities accuse Christopher Hamilton and Robert MacDonald of laundering OneCoin proceeds; however, attempts to extradite them to the US for trial have failed.

OneCoin promoters are also subject to the freeze. The promoters subject to the freeze are:

• Kari Wahlroos,
• Muhammad Zafar,
• Moynul Islam and
• Monirul Islam.

SOURCES

• https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9d1y0z4z9no
• https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2llvlx2ez9o
• https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9785924je3o

THE ABOVE STORY FOLLOWS A 2021 POSTING  

• The BBC Reveal Crypto-queen’s £13.5m London Penthouse Link to Guernsey
• https://www.comsuregroup.com/news/the-bbc-reveal-crypto-queen-s-135m-london-penthouse-link-to-guernsey/

EXTRACTS FROM THE POSTING ARE HERE

PROPERTY LEASE AND GUERNSEY

When the lease was signed in August 2016, financial regulators in at least one European country had already issued a warning about OneCoin. A few months earlier, Dr Ruja had pleaded guilty to fraud and other charges in a German court, after bankrupting a metal factory she'd bought and leaving 150 people jobless in 2011.

Lawyers at Locke Lord, a US law firm with an office in London, did express concern about the source of the 20 million euros being transferred - this is apparent from internal emails revealed later in a US court case.  But Dr Ruja's companies passed the firm's compliance checks, so they proceeded with the purchase of the property, along with AQUITAINE GROUP, A GUERNSEY COMPANY offering tax haven services to wealthy clients.

• https://www.aquitainetrust.com/

The penthouse had been refurbished by luxury property developers Candy & Candy after a fire that broke out while it was the London home of the singer, Duffy.

The estate agent was Knight Frank. But quite who had bought the flat remained unclear to the outside world, thanks to British tax haven secrecy.

According to the property deed its owner is Abbots House Penthouse Limited.

• This is an anonymous Guernsey shell company - one of 12,000 such companies that own properties in England and Wales - meaning that Dr Ruja's name would not have to appear on the UK deed, or in public records in the Channel Island.
• Other Guernsey firms were appointed as directors (or "nominees"), and a couple of months after Dr Ruja's offer was accepted, Aquitaine was listed as the company's "resident agent" in Guernsey.

The London address of Locke Lord, meanwhile, appeared on the penthouse's Land Registry documents.

This appears to have been enough to conceal Dr Ruja's purchase of the property from the City of London Police, which told swindled OneCoin investors in September 2019 that they were "unable to identify any OneCoin assets in the UK".

The truth was only revealed two months later, in emails read out in the money-laundering trial of a former Locke Lord employee in the US, Mark Scott.

Aquitaine

UK records show the owner of 11 Abbots House is also a Guernsey shell company, Abbots Property Limited, and that it too is registered at Aquitaine's address.

The smaller flat was also bought in 2016 - for £1.9m. Her name was again kept off the paperwork, but our sources say she was the one behind the purchase.

After she disappeared, 11 Abbots House seems to have taken on a different function, serving as a secret storage facility, which our sources tell us at one point housed two large safes.

We've been told it was the immediate destination for valuables that were hurriedly cleared out of the penthouse by her staff, with the help of an Aquitaine employee, before it was rented out.

Where Dr Ruja's luxury clothes, jewellery, shoes and some of her artwork went after that remains a mystery - like nearly everything with her.

A former employee told us that her "very coveted" Louboutin shoes probably went to a charity shop, but couldn't account for the final destination of all of her possessions.

It's possible some answers are known across the English Channel, in Guernsey.

The existence of these London properties is interesting news for millions of victims of the OneCoin scam, who want Dr Ruja's assets to be sold and the proceeds distributed among investors.

However, complex ownership structures - the Guernsey shell companies may be just the start - could make it difficult to prove that Dr Ruja is the legal owner.

READ FULL 2021 POSTING - https://www.comsuregroup.com/news/the-bbc-reveal-crypto-queen-s-135m-london-penthouse-link-to-guernsey/