Nexo Vehemently Denies Any Involvement In Fraud After Wave Of Arrests In Bulgaria – Decrypt

Cryptocurrency lender Nexo said it “vehemently denies” the accusations leveled against it by the Bulgarian prosecutor’s office following the arrest of four people on Friday as part of an investigation into the company.

A spokesperson, speaking on behalf of Nexo management, told Decrypt that they could not confirm whether the people arrested were employees of the company.

The Bulgarian public prosecutor’s office said during a press conference that the Bulgarian citizens who have been detained are suspected of money laundering, tax crimes, computer fraud and banking without a license, according to the Bulgarian English-language news outlet. novinite.

Nexo, a London-based digital asset platform, lends funds from its clients and uses the proceeds to pay interest. It’s one of the last standing cryptocurrency lenderssince its two main competitors, Celsius Y BlockFiThey filed for bankruptcy last year.

At the time, Nexo said it only makes overcollateralized loans. That means you tend to pay lower returns than BlockFi and Celsius used to offer. In June, his website it said it exposed customers to “essentially no risk.” That language has since been removed and replaced with a promise to “never lend unsecured.” (Note: Nexus is one of the 22 Decrypt Investors).

The company has repeatedly said that the investigation and recent raid of their offices were politically motivated.

“We witnessed a very confusing press conference by the Bulgarian Prosecutor’s Office, which, as is public knowledge, [tiene] a terrible reputation and conviction rate and has been routinely used by nefarious characters as a means of breaking and entering businesses,” a Nexo spokesperson said Friday morning. “It is also abundantly clear that the prosecutor’s office has no understanding of the blockchain technology or financial institutions and markets in general.”

A few days ago, the Bulgarian Prosecutor’s Office announced its extensive investigation into Nexo, which has an office in Sofia. Although it is still unclear how the investigation will unfold, users appeared to be in a rush to get their funds out of the Nexo platform following the raid on the office.

An archived version of Nexo’s real-time attestation tool shows that Nexo had 133,263 BTC in customer liabilities, worth about $2.4 billion, as of Thursday morning. As of Friday morning, that figure had dropped to 124,939 BTC, which is a change of about $68 million in the past day.

Cielo Finance, an on-chain data tracker, shared a screenshot on Twitter showing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of USD Coin (USDC), Binance USD (BUSD) and Ethereum leaving the platform in large transactions.

“I can confirm that all systems are working and everything is being processed in real time, as always, and that the current volume is much lower than after Celsius and after FTX,” the Nexo spokesperson said, referring to the withdrawals.