In 2014, Dr Ruja Ignatova was taking nice strides to changing into a family identify.
The flamboyant prophet of a promised technological revolution, thousands and thousands globally trusted the Bulgarian-born entrepreneur with their life financial savings, displaying unwavering religion in her imaginative and prescient for a brand new on-line foreign money. After which, in 2017, she disappeared with out rationalization.
Ten years on, there may be nonetheless scarce element on what occurred to Dr Ruja. Authorities within the US charged her with fraud in absentia, believing her to have run off with £3.3bn price of investments from supporters of her OneCoin cryptocurrency in some 175 nations. She stays probably the most needed girl on the planet.
Now, a groundbreaking investigation from the BBC has moved one step nearer to fixing the thriller of Dr Ruja’s disappearance. Following the breadcrumbs again to her shady ties in Bulgaria, Panorama asks the query: did she run away with the cash, or was she killed by the very those that have been supposed to guard her?
For seven years, the disappearance of the so-called ‘CryptoQueen’ has puzzled investigators, misplaced in a maze of useless ends as leads have vanished or washed up useless. However casting the thriller in a brand new mild, investigators bravely study Dr Ruja’s alleged ties to suspected mafia connections – and new theories about why she left.
Bulgarian-born German entrepreneur Ruja Ignatova poses throughout a London photoshoot in February 2016, eight months earlier than her disapperance
OneCoin was based in 2014, on the again of the Bitcoin revolution, and promised fortunes
When Ruja Ignatova disappeared in October 2017 – failing to show as much as a gathering with promoters in Lisbon – her critics have been already starting to choose away on the integrity of her elaborate rip-off.
Early traders had purchased into Dr Ruja’s presentation as a glamorous Oxford-graduate who had allegedly spent six years with McKinsey earlier than making the leap into the fledgling world of cryptocurrency.
She was assured, well-dressed and guaranteed her supporters her undertaking, OneCoin, was about to take off. If the figures have been to be believed, it was. Inside months, thousands and thousands of individuals worldwide had purchased into the imaginative and prescient, buying packages of a brand new foreign money on-line that they believed would in the future change the world.
In these years, Ruja by no means stayed out of the limelight. She was usually pictured at photoshoots dressed elegantly, carrying her trademark pink lipstick. As her viewers grew, she made appearances at big rallies, together with one at Wembley Stadium. OneCoin even had a music referencing ‘Ruja’s revolution’. She was the celebrated face of a really international motion.
Six years after the International Monetary Disaster, there was a way of change within the air. Mistrust in standard banks and foreign money had created a brand new house for belief in cryptocurrencies, a ‘revolutionary’ new method to cash that offered itself on taking the facility away from people and massive corporations.
Approached in the proper manner, it was secure, safe and invulnerable to manipulation from malicious actors. Those that received in quick had a lot to realize.
On this house, the story of Bitcoin’s astronomical rise – and the in a single day fortunes it had created for early backers – was onerous to overlook. In a short time, a brand new viewers emerged of potential traders keen to not miss the boat a second time – and keen to take out big loans to gamble on the viability of a comparatively new know-how.
OneCoin promised to be the whole lot that Bitcoin was changing into. Anybody might purchase ‘packages’ of the foreign money with actual cash and watch the worth rise and rise. However there have been key variations within the small print that might inevitably deter traders.
When Dr Ruja missed her assembly in October 2017, she was anticipated to lastly handle whether or not traders would have the ability to flip their digital foreign money into euros. Issues have been mounting that traders shopping for ‘packages’ of the foreign money on-line couldn’t trade it for money they might spend in outlets. The worth of their property was rising – however there was no manner of utilizing it.
Crucially, traders have been additionally slowly changing into conscious that OneCoin lacked the safeguards wanted to guard its worth from manipulation. Bitcoin was backed up by a blockchain – primarily a ledger preserving a document of transactions and worth modifications that everyone has entry to. The worth might be secured and verified with out having to relinquish management to a couple grasping people.
Revelations that OneCoin was not, in actual fact, backed up by the blockchain have been the primary pink flag – dropped at mild in a BBC investigative podcast collection by Jamie Bartlett.
For years, Bartlett has sought to know precisely what occurred in these essential months main as much as Ruja’s disappearance. His podcast with BBC Radio 5 Dwell, ‘The Lacking Cryptoqueen’, has introduced the story into focus since 2019, attracting 1000’s of listeners.
Now, he seems in a BBC Panorama story investigating new avenues as journalists and investigators proceed their hunt for the world’s most needed girl. In a stunning twist to be explored on BBC One tonight at 8pm, ‘The Lacking Cryptoqueen: Useless or Alive?’ explores whether or not Ruja cleverly calculated her escape with £3.3bn price of traders’ cash – or if she fell sufferer to a brutal mafia stab within the again.
Some imagine Dr Ruja fled with the cash, others that she might have been killed
Dr Ignatova was final seen publicly in 2017 after arriving in Athens from Bulgaria
Konstantin Ignatov (L) took over from his sister after her disappearance however was quickly arrested
Complete lives have been destroyed within the wake of revelations not all was because it appeared with OneCoin. It took a very long time for traders to understand what had occurred, permitting the harm to multiply as folks continued shopping for packages and refusing to heed the warnings.
Supporters had realized by way of cautious messaging that OneCoin’s critics have been ‘haters’, that they have been Bitcoin backers solely irritated that that they had boarded the unsuitable practice.
Everyone else didn’t see the imaginative and prescient. Believers solely wanted to be affected person.
And so when Ruja went lacking in 2017, few needed to entertain the chance that there was no practice in any respect.
70,000 folks within the UK alone are believed to have put their very own cash into shopping for packages, in keeping with the BBC. Between them, as a lot as £100mn has disappeared.
Within the 2019 podcast, Jamie Bartlett spoke to specialists who mentioned the rip-off in the identical breath as cultic actions.
It was not straightforward for folks to decouple from the promise of revolution having already sunk a lot into it. However for a lot of households, their cash would by no means be seen once more. There was no revolution – or, if there was, it was not going to be by way of OneCoin.
By 2016, sources have been starting to boost suspicions that OneCoin was not backed up by a blockchain – as Ruja claimed it was.
The worth, in essence, was ‘only a quantity that somebody in an workplace in Bulgaria had made up and will delete simply as simply’, Jamie Bartlett assessed on the podcast on the time.
When Ruja disappeared a 12 months later, then, it made sense that she ran off with the cash. She boarded a aircraft in Bulgaria with a bodyguard and flew to Athens. The bodyguard returned and she or he didn’t.
Quickly after, she was charged with securities fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money-laundering within the US.
Within the judgment of the US justice division, OneCoin was ‘an old-school pyramid scheme on a new-school platform’.
However extremely, that was not the top of OneCoin. Folks continued to work the corporate from workplaces in Bulgaria. Properties belonging to Dr Ruja discovered new use.
So who have been these folks?
Within the wake of her departure, Konstantin Ignatov – her brother – stepped in to fill the void, in keeping with prosecutors. Police swept in to arrest Ruja’s cofounder Sebastian Greenwood in 2018, and nabbed Konstantin the next March.
Konstantin – deemed the ‘de facto chief’ of OneCoin – pleaded responsible to 2 counts of wire fraud, one rely of financial institution fraud and one rely of cash laundering as a part of a deal unsealed in New York in late 2019 and spent 34 months behind bars.
However nonetheless the lights stayed on. From 2019, Bartlett started to analyze rumours that Ruja’s disappearance was a part of a a lot bigger, extra elusive narrative of mafia dealings in Bulgaria.
In Bulgaria, they have been warned away from probing too deeply, with bystanders afraid to be heard speaking to the broadcaster for concern of reprisal.
The BBC started working with an area journalists to piece collectively what actually occurred, what incentives Ruja must disappear, and who was pulling the strings in her absence.
Extra not too long ago, native media has made tentative hyperlinks between Ruja and Christoforos Amanatidis, a person in her native Bulgaria alleged to be the pinnacle of the nation’s organised crime community.
In 2022, paperwork seized from the home of an assassinated former police chief in Sofia revealed extraordinary claims that Ruja Ignatova was killed in November 2018 on behalf of Amanatidis.
Early traders had purchased into Dr Ruja’s presentation as a glamorous Oxford-graduate who had allegedly spent six years with McKinsey earlier than founding OneCoin
Ignatova allegedly scammed traders world wide to gather $4 billion for her OneCoin cryptocurrency, which was a pyramid scheme
The Lacking Cryptoqueen: Useless or Alive? strikes the story alongside 5 years, taking a step again to look at the case by way of a brand new lens.
Quizzing insiders and probing secret paperwork on her connections to the Bulgarian mafia, Panorama examines the proof Ruja merely disappeared alongside claims from alleged mafia members she was killed close to Greece, dismembered and thrown into the ocean for ‘realizing an excessive amount of’.
With this, the dream of a foreign money revolution promised ten years in the past is all however shattered by leads becoming a member of as much as an online of spies, alleged crooked officers and critical criminals believed to have used this enterprise because the façade of a a lot bigger scheme.
What occurred to Dr Ruja Ignatova might by no means be absolutely identified or understood. However the thriller surrounding her sudden rise to fame, in stark distinction to her in a single day withdrawal from the world, stays a curious artefact of the trendy world – with a warning for all in regards to the risks of what occurs within the shadows.
The Lacking Cryptoqueen: Useless or Alive? is on BBC One, 8pm, this night, with an prolonged model on the BBC World Service YouTube channel now