After six years of investigations, a spectacular trial begins today (17.09.) Before the Münster Regional Court.
It's about an invented digital currency called OneCoin.
And the question of whether this might be a global, billion-dollar fraud that began in Germany.
The accused are Manon H. and Frank R., a couple from Greven and Martin B., a lawyer from Munich. The public prosecutor's office accuses the couple from Greven of having been the German payment service provider of the invented digital currency OneCoin with their company, IMS GmbH.
IMS GmbH is said to have earned more than 320 million euros in just one year. Enormous sums then flowed into tax havens and funds abroad. The authorities were able to determine more than 88,000 incoming payments, including money from tens of thousands of Germans. They are said to have supported the dubious business with the fictitious currency OneCoin. The company is said to have received a commission of 3.2 million euros from Frank R. and Manon H. for this. The financial supervisory authority Bafin and the Bielefeld public prosecutor saw it as an unauthorized financial transfer business. In the opinion of the court, however, a conviction for money laundering and aiding and abetting fraud is also possible.
The lawyer is said to have helped by false information about the origin of the money to smuggle 75 million euros into a fund in the Cayman Islands. And he is said to have transferred around 20 million euros to London, which is said to have paid for two luxury apartments in the expensive London district of Kensington for the inventor of OneCoin, the German-Bulgarian Ruja Ignatova, known as the “Kryptoqueen”. He is accused of money laundering and fraud for both.
The defendants deny the allegations.
They only worked as a service provider for OneCoin or its founder, believed that OneCoin was a real currency, could become more successful than BitCoin and for that reason had no intention of fraud.
In addition, the duration of the proceedings is already far too long and the public reputation of the defendants is seriously damaged.
Was OneCoin really a digital currency - or should it just look like that?
Whether there is actually a conviction for fraud depends largely on one question: Can the investigators prove that OneCoin was invented - and therefore not a real crypto currency at all?
Cryptocurrencies are digital money.
The most famous of them is called Bitcoin.
There is no state, no central bank behind cryptocurrencies.
To prevent fraud, there is a built-in technical safeguard: the so-called blockchain.
You can think of it as a constantly updated, public cash book.
Each coin, each coin is only available once.
If it passes from one user to the other, this is logged in the blockchain.
This is to prevent the digital money from being spent twice.
The second security mechanism for digital currencies: the amount of money available is limited from the start.
This means that the offer is limited.
If demand increases, so does price.
If the demand falls, the price falls.
As far as OneCoin is concerned, the prosecutors hope to be able to show exactly that: that there was no functioning blockchain.
That the amount of money wasn't limited.
That is why the minds behind OneCoin could set the price for their alleged currency themselves, which, conspicuously, only rose.
In short: That the whole OneCoin system should only give the appearance of a functioning crypto currency from the start in order to get unsuspecting people to invest in OneCoin - and that the accused could know and accept all this.
Many have invested, for some it was retirement provision
In any case, the distribution of OneCoin only became really interesting in a financial sense through commissions: After all, those who invested could also attract new investors themselves. You then earned from their investment. If these new investors then recruited new customers for their part, you also earned money from their investment. Classic network marketing. Anyone who managed to gather hundreds or even thousands of new OneCoin customers in the line under his name in this way could earn considerable payouts. Only very few succeeded in doing exactly that.
To this day it is unclear how great the damage really is.
US authorities' records speak of $ 4 billion.
Internal documents from OneCoin, which Ippen Investigativ have received, show sales of 5.2 billion by mid-2017.
A US judge even named the unbelievable sum of 15 billion last year.
Worldwide, 3.5 million people are said to have invested in OneCoin, including more than 60,000 Germans, some of them enormous sums: their retirement provisions, the reserves for the children's studies.
Quite a few have also persuaded others, friends, neighbors, work colleagues, families - sometimes relationships have broken because of it.
To this day, some believe that OneCoin is
the
great revolution in the financial market, that the world currency will replace state money and that the inventor of OneCoin, the "crypto-queens" Ruja Ignatova, is preparing Day X with the world's central banks in the background.
But the majority of buyers seem to have given up the idea of ever seeing the money invested in OneCoin again.
Ippen Investigativ has spoken to numerous of them - so far, no one has got their investment back.
The people they recruited are no longer available.
Questions would not be answered.
What role did German lawyers play in the success of OneCoin?
One sentence one hears again and again from people who see themselves as OneCoin victims: The whole thing made a serious impression.
An immigrant charismatic founder from Bulgaria, went to school in the Black Forest, studied law at the University of Konstanz, even with a doctorate.
In addition, there were positive reports from German lawyers.
In fact, the now accused lawyer from Munich had already written a legal statement on the letterhead of his law firm in September 2014 - even before OneCoin really started.
It says: “In our opinion, OneCoin is a legitimate product, limited to 2.1 billion.” It is advertised in presentations from promotional events for OneCoin that Ippen Investigativ has received.
And two other legal opinions appear in these presentations. One of them comes from Rechtsanwalt Schulenberg from Hamburg, who specializes in so-called multi-level marketing, also known as direct marketing, with which OneCoin was also sold. He too had issued an “expert opinion” in the early stages of OneCoin and stated that, in his opinion, the OneCoin distribution system was legal. On behalf of OneCoin and its sales partners, Schulenberg later warned blogs and texts that reported critically about OneCoin. And as a lawyer he is defending the defendant Manon H. in the trial that is now beginning in Munster. To this day, Schulenberg blogs about OneCoin, so far he has not responded to inquiries from Ippen Investigativ.
In the meantime, German OneCoin victims are also gathering and coordinating and trying to sue for compensation.
The clock is ticking for them.
Because after five years, your claims expire, regardless of whether you only invested a few hundred euros or tens of thousands.
So and so: The coming year will be exciting for all those who hope to learn something new about OneCoin: Not only is a film being made with Kate Winslet in the lead role, there are also rumors that Netflix could make a film.
In Great Britain, an unveiling book has been announced for the summer.
In the proceedings that have now been opened in Münster, 50 days of negotiations are scheduled.
The process should run until May 2022.
It is quite possible that that is not enough either.
We continue to research the topic of OneCoin - help us!
Ippen Investigativ is the research team of the Ippen publishing group, which also includes our editorial team.
We continue researching the topic.
Do you have any tips or hints that we should follow up?
Then contact us: at
recherche@ippen-investigativ.de
.
You can find more background information on the subject of “OneCoin” here.