Foreign media: OneCoin fraud fugitive Ruja Ignatova may be hiding in Russia

Missing “crypto queen” Ruja Ignatova may be hiding in Russia to evade criminal charges, according to a BBC investigative journalist focused on Kremlin affairs. She founded a fraudulent cryptocurrency “pyramid scheme” called OneCoin, which is believed to have defrauded investors of about $4 billion. She disappeared in 2017 and has not been publicly traced since. Another journalist, Yoran Tsalov, revealed that Ignatova “has connections to multiple people and interests in the Kremlin.” Tsalov claimed that these connections were confirmed in an interview with Ignatova’s former security adviser Frank Schneider to the BBC. Schneider was a spy for Switzerland who later founded a private investigation company and was employed by OneCoin. He was placed under house arrest in France for his connection to the operation and then went on the run in 2023. In addition, Tsalov claimed that the BBC’s ongoing investigation confirmed that some of the companies that laundered money through OneCoin were linked to Ukraine’s former pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovich. In 2019, Ukraine’s Supreme Court sentenced Yanukovich in absentia to 13 years in prison for treason. He is widely believed to have acquired a vast network of overseas assets through corruption. (Decrypt)