CHAPTER 25
THE DAY AFTER
OneCoin HQ, Sofia, October 26, 2017
There was a strange sense of calm in the Sofia head office on Thursday, October 26. The vast majority of the 50 or so staffers knew nothing about what had happened the day before. Most had never met Gilbert, Mark Scott or Frank Schneider and they didn’t pay much attention to the MLM side of the business either. As far as they knew, they worked for a tech start-up with a mercurial founder. If anything, the staff were relieved, since it was always calmer when Ruja was away. Most were too busy to notice. Phase I of the “ICO” had just started, which was managed by Irina. She’d written an investor document, known in the industry as a “white paper,” which explained how the ICO worked: a three-month sale of tokens after which OneCoin would go public and finally—finally—get listed on a large crypto-exchange site where it could be bought and sold for real money. It was so full of mistakes that Gary emailed Irina on November 2, 2017, demanding the whole thing be taken down “with immediate effect.” He also emailed Ruja, saying that Irina was “destroying the company,” but of course received nothing back. Konstantin certainly didn’t let on that anything was wrong. On the day Ruja disappeared, he posted a picture of himself on Instagram with his dogs: “Come and Meet the wretched #goodmorning #dog #instadog.”
Over in London, Gary Gilford didn’t know about Ruja’s early morning Ryanair flight so assumed he was still meeting her in Sofia in five days’ time to talk about who should replace Pitt Arens as CEO. (Gary thought Robert Courtneidge, the payments lawyer from Locke Lord, might be interested.) After hearing nothing from Ruja for a couple of days, he grew anxious and messaged Konstantin to confirm the meeting was still going ahead.
“She’s not here, Gary,” Konstantin told him.
“Where is she?” Gary asked, annoyed that Ruja hadn’t bothered to let him know. “Why hasn’t she been in touch? I’m trying to help her fix the business!”
“She’s had to go somewhere,” he replied, but wouldn’t say where. “She’ll be away for a few weeks.”
A few days later, Gary messaged Ruja again, hoping to find out where she’d gone. “Hi R—are you OK?” But he didn’t get a reply. When Gary next spoke to Konstantin a couple of weeks later on a routine catch-up call, he demanded to know what was going on. He was the director of a family office and the head of the family had gone AWOL.1 For months, Ruja had promised RavenR would receive huge amounts of money to start making large investments on her behalf—all the activity to date had been through Ruja’s Fenero Funds—but it never seemed to materialize. And, as RavenR boss, he had rent and salaries to pay.
“She’s been gone for weeks. Where is she?!” Gary said, getting angry.
“She’ll be back before Christmas, Gary,” Konstantin replied, calmly. He was adamant about it.
“Are you actually speaking to Ruja or just emailing her?” Gary asked.
“I’m speaking with her,” Konstantin said.
It was all very strange. But Konstantin didn’t seem fazed that his sister had disappeared. Neither did her mother, Veska, who was also still working at the Sofia office. “Actually I went to see her,” Konstantin continued. “Because if anything happened, we had this plan that she would go to…”
But Konstantin stopped himself finishing the sentence, and wouldn’t say another word about it. Athens? Or somewhere else, somewhere safer?
Over the following weeks, a slow panic rolled across the network. Top leaders like Igor phoned and messaged Ruja but never heard anything back. If anyone asked Konstantin, he told them Ruja was taking “late maternity leave,” and, if they continued asking, he said it was “disloyal” to probe. Frank Schneider had more information, but it was scant. He’d claimed that after Ruja had landed in Athens, she’d boarded a domestic flight to Thessaloniki in northern Greece, where she’d got into a black Porsche Cayenne with several men—likely Russians or Albanians. But at that point even the spook’s sources went cold. Terence Fane-Saunders, the CEO of PR firm Chelgate, was equally baffled, and pretty soon cut the contract with OneCoin. (Fane-Saunders has not responded to my request for comment, but in a previous response to the BBC, Terence said that “OneCoin and Ms Ignatova had their own PR/media relation facilities and we were not carrying out any kind of media relations programme. We were among a group of professional advisers providing counsel on a complex and evolving situation.” Fane-Saunders also said he had no evidence of criminal activity by any party.) None of it made sense to Gary. People don’t just disappear—not with all the cameras, devices, tracking systems and citizen journalists. But Ruja had left no trace at all.
Ruja still hadn’t turned up by the next OneCoin corporate event in Bangkok in early December 2017 and rumors were picking up velocity. BehindMLM speculated that she had executed a long-planned and entirely predictable exit, while a Bulgarian website reported she’d been arrested in Germany. One magazine claimed her yacht had been spotted docking somewhere on the Black Sea. The rumors all turned out to be false but investors were getting increasingly jumpy. Cryptocurrency was an unconventional industry with unpredictable bosses, but they don’t vanish for weeks on end.
To maintain some degree of continuity, Frank Ricketts, the MLM Rembrandt and boss of the IMS companies that Ruja had used to move money, agreed to step in.2 (Ricketts later claimed that he was asked just before the Thailand event to put “motivational and personal development programs together on a global scale as an independent trainer.”) To quell the rumors about Ruja’s vanishing act, someone also asked Konstantin if he would address the crowd. In addition to being well-known within the company as Ruja’s PA and brother, he had the cushion-cover spiritualism that was popular with the MLM crowd, posting online often about self-improvement, abstinence, self-belief, intuition and meditation. But he was not a prodigy like his sister. He was a gym guy, an Instagram poser who knew nothing about cryptocurrency, finance or even how OneCoin’s own technology worked. He asked the IT team several times to describe the blockchain technology and it never made sense to him. Nevertheless, Konstantin liked the idea of being a front man, and, just as in June 2016 when Ruja needed a new PA, he was ready to help the family business. Konstantin had some business cards made and headed to Bangkok.
The OneCoin event at the Crystal Design Centre in downtown Bangkok on December 2 was superficially like previous corporate events in London, Macau or Dubai—there was glitter, professional dancers, motivationals and recognitions. But all the 3,000 attendees wanted to talk about was Ruja’s whereabouts. She hadn’t been seen for six weeks. They secretly hoped she’d dramatically walk onstage in one of her long ball gowns and explain how the ICO would work or declare that xcoinx was back online. But there were no last-minute surprises. The only Ignatov present was Konstantin, who told the disappointed audience the same thing he told everyone else: Ruja was on maternity leave and sent her “warmest regards.” Sebastian spoke in cryptic phrases, which undid some of Konstantin’s well-delivered reassurances: “We go through changes… without change, you become stale,” he said, slurring his words slightly. “You don’t move forward. So change is good…” Igor, who’d agreed to present recognition awards for the Diamonds and Emeralds, thought Sebastian was drunk. The event wasn’t the same without the Cryptoqueen. Not even Frank Ricketts (who, as the final speaker, “sailed” onto the stage on a huge mechanical boat) could lift the mood. Frank’s opening words sounded like a legal disclaimer: “I am not joining the company and am not part of the administration of the company.”
It was obvious to any experienced promoter that the game was finally up. Momentum had been waning for most of 2017 and without Ruja it now slowed to a standstill. Kari Wahlroos left soon after Ruja’s Lisbon no-show, along with several other Diamonds. But Igor, who’d taken so long to join, also took longer to leave. He’d made so much money from OneCoin and believed every word of his own MLM-gospel, which classed all criticism as negative energy. But gradually even Igor realized something was seriously wrong and soon after the Lisbon event he told promoters to freeze all promotions until things were clarified. He later claimed watching the movie The Wizard of Lies about Bernie Madoff convinced him that it was possible to fool millions of people for years, although it seems unlikely that one of the world’s biggest MLM sellers first learned about Bernie Madoff in late 2017. Whatever the trigger, in the weeks after Ruja’s disappearance, Igor contacted former colleagues, blockchain specialists and legal experts to ask for their advice. They told him that he needed to find out if OneCoin really had a proper blockchain. If it didn’t exist, he’d been selling the world a duff.
Soon after the Bangkok event, Igor travelled to Sofia for one last go at finding out the truth. He half hoped to see Ruja herself, but instead Veselina Valkova and Konstantin greeted him at the Crypto Centre and took him up to one of the meeting rooms on the fourth floor. With Ruja gone, Veselina, Konstantin and Irina (who wasn’t around that day) were the most senior people left. That alone was a red flag. Veselina, a relatively recent recruit who specialized in online casinos, had quickly become a high-ranking member of Ruja’s inner circle, but Igor knew Konstantin as the bodyguard and PA—and now he seemed to be in charge of the whole company. As he walked through the office, Igor took a look around. Sofia HQ had always been full of energy and buzz. But now everyone seemed worried and uncertain. Another red flag.
Igor had spent the previous weeks preparing the questions he wanted to ask: about the ICO, the IPO, going public. For him, there was one question above all that needed answering.
“Veselina,” Igor said, “Do we have a blockchain or not?”
“Yes, we do,” Veselina replied. That wasn’t enough. Everyone at Sofia HQ always said “yes” but never actually offered any proof.
“Look me in the eyes,” Igor went on. “Don’t lie to me. Tell me honestly. Have you seen it?”
“No. I have never seen it,” Veselina replied.
According to Igor, Veselina’s answer was the final straw.
“How is this even possible? How can it be with all the money there is no blockchain?!”
“We don’t have any money left,” Veselina replied. “The money is all with Ruja.”
“This is worse than Bernie Madoff! Investors will come to the office and find you!” Igor said, getting angry. His whole career—30 years in the industry—was on the line. (According to Veselina, she told Igor that she was “the wrong person” to ask about the blockchain, and that Ruja’s disappearance “makes no difference,” since the company was still going.)
Igor resigned on the spot (OneCoin HQ later told investors he had been fired). In truth, money wasn’t the problem. Even with all the gold in Fort Knox, it was impossible to retrospectively build a blockchain. Igor got in touch with the top promoters in his downline, just as he had 18 months earlier, and told them: it’s over.