OneCoin Investors Allege BNY Mellon Aided $4B Fraud

Sep 25, 2020 at 11:55 UTCUpdated Sep 25, 2020 at 12:00 UTC.Bank of New York Mellon has been accused of playing a "Central role" in the $4 billion Ponzi scheme OneCoin, just days after the publication of the so-called FinCEN Files.

Plaintiffs accuse BNY Mellon on one count of aiding and abetting fraud, as well as one count of commercial bad faith.

In a statement, a BNY Mellon spokesperson said the bank took "Its role in protecting the integrity of the global financial system seriously" but, by law, would not comment on any SAR it may have filed with the U.S authorities.

The amended suit comes days after news source BuzzFeed released thousands of normally secret SARs reports flagging suspect transactions with the authorities.

One particular transaction in 2016 saw $30 million wired from an account belonging to a British Virgin Islands-based company, to BNY Mellon, who then credited it to an account in Hong Kong.

While the transaction was allegedly a loan for the purchase of an oilfield, emails seized by the authorities show the loan was never repaid and that $10 million was actually withdrawn by one of the OneCoin founders.

U.S. authorities have already testified, in a separate case, to say that they believe this loan was an example of proceeds from the OneCoin sale being laundered.

Ignatova's brother, Konstantin, was dropped from the class-action filed by Berdeaux and Grablis last month after the two sides reached a settlement.