Seychelles Police Asked to Probe Transfer of 230K Bitcoin Linked to OneCoin Scam
Police have received documents requesting an investigation into multiple transactions, which included cash and property worth more than $10 billion.
Sep 2, 2021 at 11:48 a.m. UTC:format(webp)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/coindesk/GGKGM622CBA4NHFWEA4EQNVKUA.jpg)
Jamie Crawley is a CoinDesk news reporter based in London.
Law enforcers in Seychelles have been asked to investigate the transfer of 230,000 bitcoin linked to the alleged OneCoin Ponzi scheme.
- The country’s Financial Crime Investigation Unit (FCIU) confirmed receiving documents requesting an investigation into multiple transactions, which included cash and property worth over $10 billion, Seychelles News Agency reported Monday.
- Tania Potter, head of legal affairs for the FCIU, said that the unit had “received quite a number of documents, as part of the complaint, some of which need to undergo a verification process to identify any links to the Seychelles and upon completion, a decision on the next step will be taken.”
- The lawyer lodging the complaint, Jonathan Levy, said that the “the misuse of the Seychelles jurisdiction and involvement of public officials to commit the crypto crime of the century calls into question the use of the Seychelles by other crypto ventures.”
- “If Seychelles lacks the ability to regulate crypto asset transactions worth billions, then there are serious anti-money laundering issues raised about cryptocurrency companies that choose to base their operations there,” he said.
- The alleged OneCoin Ponzi scheme is said to have defrauded around $4 billion from millions of investors.
- Investors were told OneCoin could be mined and had actual value, though it did not in fact exist on a blockchain and its perceived value was manipulated by automatic generation of new coins.
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Jamie Crawley is a CoinDesk news reporter based in London.
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Jamie Crawley is a CoinDesk news reporter based in London.
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