CHAPTER 30

BANKING THE UNBANKED

Entebbe International Airport, October 30, 2018

Wearing his “Twins MMA” T-shirt, a gift from the local mixed martial arts center where he trained, Konstantin walked out of arrivals at Kampala’s Entebbe airport. Even though it had just passed 3 AM in the morning, there were dozens of people waiting for him, wearing OneCoin T-shirts and waving Dealshaker flags. It was more like the arrival of a rock star than the boss of a tech firm. When Konstantin finally made it past the mêlée, a police motorcade accompanied him to his hotel.

The trip to Uganda was Fred Ntabazi’s idea. Fred was a former street preacher in his thirties turned hotshot local promoter. While many OneCoiners talked in loosely spiritual terms, Fred took it literally. In 2016, he founded the “OneLight Ministry,” which combined religious worship with MLM. Fred had risen to Diamond by pushing the coin through his church of around 100 fervent OneCoin believers, who would turn up to the fourth floor of the Padre Pio building in central Kampala every Sunday to listen to his unique blend of crypto prosperity gospel and Pentecostalism. “Dealshaker,” Fred would shout. “Game Changer!” they would reply. His sermons would sometimes last for hours as he jumped between financial emancipation, the power of prayer, Ruja’s vision and lines from the Bible. He occasionally asked his followers to pray for the coin to go public. When parishioners asked him when exactly that day would come, he would tell them to wait. “Those who are patient will go to heaven,” he used to reply. “God has told me that the coin is genuine.”

Konstantin had agreed to travel to Uganda because OneCoin needed money. Having a gun pushed into the back of his head had shaken him up, and he spent most of 2018 on the road desperately trying to hustle up more sales. Trying to release funds from Ruja’s puzzle of assets was proving almost impossible. The more mature markets like Europe, America and China were drying up even before Ruja left, and, once she vanished, most believers in Glasgow or New York or Tokyo weren’t willing to pour more in. In 2018, Konstantin visited 40 countries (and took 200 flights), and many of them were to places where there was less information about OneCoin: Colombia in March; Malawi and South Africa in May; Brazil, Trinidad and Argentina in July. In these newer markets, OneCoin was still growing. In Uganda alone, there were at least a dozen local OneCoin offices and over 50,000 investors, who continued to promote the coin using the Forbes cover or FCA notice as “proof.” Although some had heard rumors that Ruja had left, many didn’t speak English and were reliant on their uplines for information, who told them that everything was fine. By the time Konstantin arrived, OneCoin was a household name in large parts of the country, possibly even more famous than Bitcoin itself. As soon as his visit to Kampala was announced, investors from South Africa, Tanzania, Congo, Nigeria, booked bus tickets, flights and borrowed cars, just to get there. For some of them, it would be a three- or four-day trip.

For three days, Fred drove Konstantin across the country in his white Range Rover. He visited schools and met politicians. He addressed the OneLife East Africa Summit and promised a financial revolution for the millions of people without a bank account. At a large orphanage, he donated 100 OneCoin tablet computers and told the children that “Every day you spend in school, you’re building your future.”

On day two of his visit, Konstantin and Fred travelled to Mbarara, a fast-growing city in the prosperous farming region in the west of the country. OneCoin had spread to Mbarara almost as soon as it arrived in Uganda, following the path laid out by other MLM companies who’d been targeting wealthy farmers for years. As they crossed the equator on the four-hour drive west, Konstantin noticed the young men loitering on rebuilt motorbikes who always seemed to be waiting, the roadside livestock searching for clumps of grass, the billboards advertising mobile money, the banana plantations that lined the roads… this was how far his sister’s vision had travelled. Even in Sofia, Ruja was no more than a minor celebrity, a half-famous businesswoman whose face occasionally graced the trashy papers. But half a world from home, Ruja Ignatova was a household name. She had never actually visited places like Mbarara—her OneCoin universe was five-star hotels in Dubai, Macau, London and Hong Kong—but somewhere out here, Konstantin had found the bottom of his sister’s million-person pyramid—down dirt tracks off a road 400 miles from Kampala. It was a long way from Ruja’s Sozopol mansion, Igor’s Dolce & Gabbana collection, or rooms stacked with cash. But these people had paid for all of that.

In one way, the trip was invigorating. OneCoin was on the ropes everywhere. Regulators were getting more aggressive, BehindMLM continued to target the firm, and whatever investors remained were growing even more restless. But in Uganda, Ruja’s disappearance, the German raid, the blockchain revelations—it was as if none of it had ever happened. But he knew he was ripping these people off, promising a financial revolution while pushing them deeper into poverty. He later admitted that he was racked with guilt when he spoke at the school and orphanage. In Uganda, lives depended on OneCoin. People had staked their entire lives and savings on his sister’s promises. Some were running from the bank, others had pulled their kids out of school. He knew that one day all these people would realize that the money was gone.

It had now been almost a year since anyone had seen Ruja. Shortly before Konstantin was in Uganda, Gary met up with Ruja’s spook Frank Schneider—perhaps he knew something. In fact, in June 2018 James Channo from Locke Lord had written to Ruja explaining that “further to our discussion with Frank Schneider, we believe it is important to revisit the manner in which you hold your real estate interests in the UK.” (A statement provided by Locke Lord and James Channo said the letter was an offer of legal services “in a standard form,” that “there was no resulting engagement and no work was carried out” for Ruja, that the letter was disclosed by Locke Lord to US prosecutors, and that there was no suggestion during the trial that the letter demonstrated any wrongdoing.) It seems the reply placed Frank and Konstantin in charge: “You have given us instructions that we are to correspond and take instructions from Frank Schneider… and your brother Konstantin.”

If Frank was acting for Ruja somehow, perhaps he knew something, anything, about her whereabouts. But Frank told Gary around this time that he’d called his contacts, applied his techniques and even had people searching through morgues for women Ruja’s age. But even the experienced spook had found nothing.

But to Gary, it made no sense. If Ruja was dead, why did Veska or Konstantin never seem upset? She was the family star and they were carrying on like nothing had happened. And how come Konstantin said he had seen her? Was this Ruja’s way of telling everyone: “I’m not coming back. Don’t wait for me”?