CHAPTER 26
THE RAID
OneCoin HQ, Sofia, January 18, 2018
Given the events of the last few weeks, if OneCoin were to continue it needed a reboot for the new year. In early January, Frank Ricketts convened a large meeting in Frankfurt of the remaining top promoters. There were lots of problems, but OneCoin still had a huge network of enthusiastic and talented sellers, which was priceless in the MLM world. It was agreed that OneCoin needed a rebrand. No more clowns like Kari or Igor. No more sunglasses onstage and Lamborghinis parked out front. Better training materials. And, finally, Konstantin should take on more of a leadership role. It was called the “New Generation” and a small cabal of top promoters formed a “Global Leadership Group” to drive the new direction. For now, at least, OneCoin would continue selling. Almost immediately, disaster struck.
The Bielefeld public prosecutor’s request to raid the OneCoin office, which was originally filed in the summer of 2017 just before Ruja disappeared, had been delayed several times. Finally, on the morning of January 18, 2018, a joint Bulgarian-German police team entered the side door of 6A Petko R. Slaveykov Square armed with a search warrant. They found around 20 confused members of staff working at their desks. One of the German officers noticed an oversized picture of Ruja hanging on the wall. She was still there in spirit, although not in person.
Over the next several hours they confiscated laptops, servers and thousands of documents—anything that might serve as evidence for the German prosecutor’s allegations of money laundering, false advertising and illegal selling of financial products—including the computers that contained the elusive blockchain. It was after midnight before the operation was over. The next morning, German and Bulgarian police interviewed several employees, including Veska, Irina Dilkinska and Veselina Valkova. Veska told them she didn’t know where her daughter was, and, although she’d been managing director, only received “a very small” salary. No arrests were made, and Ruja never turned up (nor did Konstantin).
Two days later, Sofia HQ rushed out a press release claiming the whole affair was yet more unfair treatment, more fake news:
[I]t is a demonstration against One Network Service Ltd., the virtual currency OneCoin and its creator Dr. Ruja Ignatova. We see a purposeful media campaign to discredit the reputation of the above-mentioned and deliberate concealment of important features from the company’s business, which presents us in a totally negative light.
But the routine was starting to wear thin, even for the staff. At least three decided enough was enough and simply didn’t turn up for work the next day.1 Momchil Nikov, the IT guy since 2014, was also spooked. Shortly after the raid, Konstantin went to see him to discuss how serious this police investigation was.
“Is there something we should be worried about?” Konstantin asked. He’d never really paid all that much attention to the technology side of the business until now. He’d left that all to Ruja.
“The blockchain is…” Momchil replied, cryptically, “… not exactly what it should be.”
“What do you mean?” he asked. “Can we fix it? Let’s try to make it work.”
But Momchil was facing the same problem that had stumped Ruja. And if it was beyond her, it was certainly beyond him. Although Momchil was a decent IT professional, he was no blockchain specialist. According to one former colleague, Momchil was harassed and bullied by Ruja and “made to do things he wasn’t comfortable with.” A few days after his chat with Konstantin, Momchil left the office as usual after work and never came back. According to at least one former employee, he also took whatever limited technology the company still had.
The January raid was also the last straw for Sebastian Greenwood. He stopped promoting OneCoin entirely, cut ties with the head office and ensconced himself in Thailand, safely out of reach of European law enforcement. In March 2018, he purchased a large defunct holiday resort on the island of Vanuatu with a mysterious British businessman from Bangkok called Geoffrey Bond.2 He starting spending his time racing fast cars—he’d always loved Formula 1—and relaxing in his large mansion in Ko Samui.
Four years after that first frenetic summer when Juha, Sebastian and Ruja hashed out the comp plan and dreamt of revolutionizing money, all three founders were out.
One quiet afternoon in May, some of the staff at the Sofia HQ were starting the weekend early with some drinks. Irina was usually very discreet and considered, but she had one weakness: when she drank, she talked.
“Konstantin,” Irina said, a couple of drinks in. “I need to tell you something about our blockchain.” Konstantin, who was teetotal, didn’t usually get involved in drunken conversations about the business. But this time he listened, because Irina was one of the few people who knew everything. “We have been distributing more coins than we have been mining.”
“So what have we been selling people?!” Konstantin asked. His blood ran cold. The “new blockchain” had now been running for 18 months. Although sales were slower since Ruja left, millions of coins had continued to be sold to investors.
“We have been selling people thin air,” said Irina.
This was probably the last moment Konstantin could have walked away from OneCoin. He might have pleaded ignorance like Igor Alberts would eventually do, or even disappeared to the Far East like Sebastian and Juha. Although he was starting to take on more responsibility, on paper he was still just a junior staffer who’d only joined the company in the summer of 2016. But OneCoin was the Ignatov family business. His mother, Veska, still worked there as the office manager, and Konstantin was loyal to his family. Back in 2011, when Ruja and her father ran the Waltenhofen Gusswerks into the ground, Plamen fell ill. Even though he had nothing to do with the affair, it was Konstantin who left university and moved back home to look after him. Not Ruja—she headed back to Sofia to carry on with her career. The whole family owed everything to this company and he refused to believe that his sister had left him in charge of a tech company with no real technology and hundreds of billions of dollars of theoretical investor liabilities. He felt duty bound to carry on.
One evening around this time, Konstantin left the office late after another long day of work. It wasn’t unusual for him to work into the night and it was dark and cold. As Konstantin made his way to the back road where his car was parked, he felt a cold metallic object being pushed into the back of his head. A voice told him to carry on walking. He knew immediately it was a gun.