A “Dubai Unlocked” leak pertaining to real-estate information within the UAE has tied over two dozen properties to OneCoin scammers.
The leak, shared and vetted by numerous media publications, additionally offers intel on OneCoin fugitive Frank Schneider.
The package deal covers the possession and use of a whole bunch of 1000’s of properties in Dubai, in addition to additional private info from their homeowners and customers.
The data largely comes from 2020 and 2022 and was verified for months with info from official sources.
Describing Dubai as an “Eldorado for oligarchs, drug lords and different underworld figures, in a paywalled Might fifteenth article Der Spiegel experiences OneCoin founder Ruja Ignatova, additionally a fugitive, bought a luxurious house in Dubai in 2015 for ~2.4 million euros.
Ignatova offered her Dubai house in late 2019. On the time Ignatova had been indicted within the US and was wished on OneCoin fraud prices.
In the meantime, the suspected fraudsters purchased one luxurious property after one other.
Co-founder Sebastian Greenwood was already primarily based in Dubai and to this present day he owns an opulent villa close to the Montgomerie Golf Membership.
Different OneCoin scammers who bought property in Dubai embrace:
Stephan Steinkeller (proper), a wished fugitive in Italy, bought a “207 sq. meter property for a very good a million euros, in addition to one other two-room house within the newly developed harbor district for greater than 500,000 euros” (the info exhibits Steinkeller nonetheless owns the property and rents it out for 70,000 euros a 12 months)- Kari Wahlroos has “one villa and 7 residences” in Dubai
- Frank Schneider “bought a 270 sq. meter residence on the fifth flooring of the “Serenia Residences” for round 1.7 million euros” in 2018 (Schneider offered the house in 2022 whereas underneath home arrest in France)
In whole, the info can be utilized to assign greater than two dozen Dubai properties to the OneCoin administration crew, for which they spent a double-digit million sum.
OCCRP experiences OneCoin scammers have been capable of purchase and promote properties in Dubai
regardless of a United Arab Emirates legislation in place since 2019 that requires realtors to run background checks on patrons and sellers of properties, and report any suspicious transactions to authorities.
UAE officers — together with on the ministries of inside, financial system, and justice — and Dubai Police didn’t reply to detailed questions from reporters concerning the sale of properties belonging to Ignatova and Schneider.
Previous to disappearing final 12 months, Frank Schneider (proper) referred to himself as a “Dubai-based businessman who travels tirelessly.”
Over the course of overseeing OneCoin’s cash laundering operations and dealing intently with Ruja Ignatova, Schneider is reported to have personally stolen 14 million euros by way of numerous Dubai shell corporations.
Studies Der Spiegel;
Till the start of the pandemic, the Luxembourger was “consistently coming and going” within the emirate, considered one of his acquaintances instructed reporters from the analysis crew.
A health app recorded considered one of his coaching laps in 2020, 18 kilometers throughout the palm island.
OCCRP moreover experiences;
Schneider’s most up-to-date UAE ID knowledge exhibits his residency was licensed by way of July 2023, which might have granted him lawful entry into Dubai on the time he escaped French custody.
Indonesia has additionally emerged as a possible place of curiosity with respect to Schneider’s whereabouts.
Schneider appeared as director of an Indonesia-registered firm known as White Orchid Administration, described in registration paperwork as being arrange in March 2020 to purchase, promote, hire, and function actual property.
On September 8, 2023 –– months after Schneider disappeared –– the shares of the corporate have been transferred to his spouse and son, and he left his place as director.
Neither Dubai or Indonesia have extradition treaties with the US.
Additionally price noting is that this trade between former OneCoin high promoter Kari Wahlroos (proper) and Der Spiegel;
[Wahlroos] a former main proprietor in Dubai, who says he’s now in Malaysia – and has “nothing to do with Dubai anymore” – is extra talkative.
All rumors that his former boss was murdered on a ship on behalf of a Bulgarian underworld determine in 2018 and that her physique was dumped within the Ionian Sea are “bullshit”.
[Wahlroos] claims: she is alive and guarded by highly effective folks, and he even has her quantity. May he reveal them to the reporters? “Positively not, I’m not a fucking rat.”
Malaysia does have an extradition treaty with the US. Whether or not Wahlroos is an individual of curiosity to US authorities nonetheless is unclear.
Because of the proliferation of scams, sheltering of wished fraudsters and failure to implement securities fraud regulation, BehindMLM has ranked Dubai because the MLM crime capital of the world for years.
BehindMLM’s tips for Dubai stay unchanged:
- If somebody lives in Dubai and approaches you about an MLM alternative, they’re making an attempt to rip-off you.
- If an MLM firm relies out of or represents it has ties to Dubai, it’s a rip-off.