Nexo has shared a blog on their own website in which they threaten legal action against an anonymous Twitter user. The aim is to silence the anonymous person. The Twitter user accuses the founders of Nexo of embezzling money from a children’s medical charity for their own purposes.
Nexo is a platform where you can lend crypto at interest.
Money stolen from charity
The Twitter account, which refers to itself as ‘Otter’ in the third person, published a series of tweets yesterday claiming that the founders of Nexo had stolen money from a charity. The tweets have received thousands of likes and retweets.
NEXO FOUNDER & FAMILY SIPHONED FUNDS FROM CHARITY FOR SICK KIDS, USED DONATIONS AS PERSONAL SLUSH FUND, EVEN BUILT A PALACE FOR THEMSELVES
Evidences presented in full by otter below
no bueno!
🦦 👇🏼 🧵 🦦
— otteroooo (@otteroooo) June 26, 2022
What are otter’s allegations?
The following is from otter itself and has not been fact-checked by us. According to otter, Nexo was co-founded by three Bulgarians.
- Kosta Kantchev
- Antoni Trenchev
- Georgi Shulev
Legally, the third, Georgi Shulev, has been removed from the register. He is the son of former Bulgarian Deputy Prime Minister Lydia Shuleva.
Otter says that in 2020, Bulgarian reporters discovered a huge scandal about HelpKarma, a charity that focuses on children’s health. According to bird.bg (Bureau for Investigative Reporting & Data), the donations were used to buy real estate, luxury personal trips, and so on. What they further discovered was that Kalin Kanchev, the father of the number 1 of the 3, was installed on the board of directors of HelpKarma in March 2018.
Coincidentally, March 2018 was Nexo’s first ICO.
Finance minister spoke out
Otter says HelpKarma raised millions of dollars through donations and handed out huge commissions to:
- the board (father of 1)
- founder (nephew of 1)
- salaries for colleagues with a monthly salary of 50 thousand dollars (average in Bulgaria is a thousand dollars).
It was such a big scandal that Deputy Minister of Finance of Bulgaria interfered. He calculated that 12.2% of the donations were paid out as “salaries,” while it should only be 5%. By the way, there were only 17 people on the payroll.
According to Otter, Konsta Kanchev (number 1 of 3) continued to embezzle money, and he used it to build a palace. Otter says the money came from the donations of more than 130,000 Bulgarians who thought it was helping children medically.
Money from HelpKarma to loan company
Another investigative news centre in Bulgaria called Lupa.bg, found that while HelpKarma donations were pouring in, Credissimo & CredissimoSuper were receiving a lot of capital. According to otter, Credissimo has these same shareholders as HelpKarma and Nexo. Credissimo is a Bulgarian credit company that offers payday loans at competitive rates.
For what it’s worth, Credissimo is mentioned 32 times in Nexo’s ICO whitepaper.
Stop and debunk
After Otter shared these allegations on Twitter, Nexo published two posts on its website that same day: one of these was a letter asking the Twitter account to stop posting (or else…), the other post attempts to debunk Otter’s allegations.
The debunking blog reads:
“Several anonymous Twitter accounts are using lies and distortion in yet another smear campaign against Nexo, profiting from short positions in an ailing market. The entire thread of the anonymous group of shortsellers is based on superficial lies and far-fetched connections from 2020.”
Otter says that in addition to these two pages, there has also been 25 thousand dollars bid on his Twitter account.
NEXO'S FAILED TRICKS TO SILENCE OTTER
Nexo Bulgarian mafia tricks are cute
thread shows how otter trolled suspected Nexo alt account
Otter knew it was a set up to buy the account to silence otter
Come see how they try and slander otter
and try get info on my Nexo posts
🦦🧵
— otteroooo (@otteroooo) June 27, 2022
Nexo, which offers interest rates of 18% on cryptocurrency, claims to serve more than four million customers. According to its website, it has more than $12 billion under management.
We will continue to follow this soap opera as this will undoubtedly have a tail end. When the euphoria of the bull market wears off, it is not only time to build, but the scandals also come to the fore. In this respect, the following applies not only to investing, but also to news: Never waste a good bear market.
