Ever since Ruja left the university her work came first. Every moment relaxing was time that could be more productively used. And for the first two years at OneCoin she embraced workaholism, just as she had at McKinsey: Her life was a punishing routine of meetings, late-night phone calls, endless long-haul flights, and high-profile presentations and speeches. She lived and breathed OneCoin. She had adoring fans on every continent, more money than she could possibly spend, and absolute control over a company that promised to revolutionize money itself. Finally, she was realizing her potential.
But fulfilling one’s dreams rarely satisfies ambitious people for long. She’d been working flat out for over a decade and was now well into her mid-thirties. According to close friends, soon after OneCoin took off, Ruja decided she wanted to become a mother and by early 2016 there were rumors among staff and top promoters that Ruja was planning a surrogacy pregnancy. At no point in her extensive public speaking—right until the days before the birth—is there evidence that Ruja was visibly pregnant. The information during this period is limited, but shortly before her two-week spell in London, Ruja found out that she would be due a baby in late autumn 2016.
Ruja was thrilled by the news but realized that it would mean a lot of changes in her life. Her trip to London was intended not just to meet with Mark Scott, but also to start planning her new life as a mother. Ruja thought that London would be a better place to raise a child than Frankfurt, Sofia or Dubai. So, after Mark left for Florida to deal with Fenero, she turned her attention to opening a “family office” in the heart of the city.
A family office is like a private investment fund, except it looks after the wealth of a single person. As the owner, Ruja would be able to send some of her money to the family office and handpick a team to advise on how to best invest it. Family offices can also be a good way to pass large sums of money between family members—something that was now more pressing.
Ruja spent several days in her penthouse suite at the Four Seasons interviewing candidates to work for her new family office, which she named “RavenR Capital.” (Because of her raven-black hair and initial “R.” In fact, there were two RavenR companies: one in Dubai, created in 2015 to hold some of Ruja’s personal wealth there; and RavenR Capital in London.) Gary Gilford, a qualified solicitor in his late forties who’d done a stint at Citibank, agreed to join as director after she promised him it would be well resourced and professionally run. Ruja also hired some sharp financial brains, including a pair of Russians called Anton Zherebtsov and Anatoly Gorlov, and Max von Arnim, a specialist in private equity who supported RavenR Capital as a part-time external consultant.
London was slowly becoming her city of choice. On March 23, 2016, her offer of £13.6 million was accepted for a luxurious four-bedroom Kensington penthouse, complete with swimming pool.1 Soon afterward, she also purchased a second flat in the same block, which was used mostly for storage, bodyguards and guests. A few days later, she took out a 36-month lease for an office space for her family office, RavenR Capital, in one of the UK’s most prestigious addresses: 1, Knightsbridge.
But before she could focus fully on her future, Ruja had to fix something from her past—a secret she’d been hiding from her investors and the network. It threatened to destroy OneCoin, RavenR Capital and everything else Ruja had worked so hard to build. Shortly after opening the new RavenR Capital office, Ruja quietly headed back to Germany to face justice for a crime she’d committed five years earlier.