Authorities in Poland have successfully secured the arrest of the president of Crypto Capital.
The president of the crypto services company, Crypto Capital, has been arrested by authorities in Poland for his alleged involvement in the crime. Ivan Manuel Molina Lee was recently picked up by Polish police under the accusation that he is deeply involved in several illegal activities including being a member of an international drug dealing cartel as well as money laundering accusations which were allegedly done by him using Bitfinex.
According to local Polish media platform RMF24, Molina Lee was picked in Greece after a European Arrest Warrant (EAW), was obtained for his arrest by the authorities in Wroclaw and he was extradited back to Poland, where he landed at the Warsaw Chopin Airport and was immediately handed over to the Polish police.
For a while now, crypto exchange Bitfinex and Tether, have been involved in a fraudulent case initiated by the New York State Attorney General (NYAG) regarding the companies’ decision to illegally take out $850 million from reserves to cover up a loss of the same amount, without informing investors.
However, Crypto Capital, who handled Bitfinex’s funds, told the exchange that the funds were unreachable because they had been seized by law enforcement authorities in several countries including Portugal, the U.K., the U.S. and Poland as well, forcing Bitfinex to announce an Initial Exchange Offering (IEO) months ago in May, in an effort to raise $1 billion to make up for the inaccessible funds.
Nevertheless, Bitfinex has said made it quite clear that it believes there might be something else Crypto Capital is not revealing and has gone ahead to apply for a subpoena, with the US Court in the Central District of Southern California. According to the application, Bitfinex wants to take the testimony of Rondell “Rhon” Clyde Monroe who is the Vice President of TCA Investment Bancorp and Trust company, a firm which Crypto Capital allegedly employed to handle and transfer its funds.
Before now, accounts in the name of Crypto SP. ZO.O. and NESP SP. Z O.O., two companies allegedly tied to Crypto Capital, had actually been frozen by the Ministry of Justice in Poland. The freeze was done by Polish authorities during a money laundering investigation it was conducting resulting in the seizure of about $350 million. The National Public Prosecutor’s Office called it “the largest security [freeze] in the history of the Polish prosecutor’s office against forfeiture.”
Crypto Capital currently stands accused of creatin Bank Spółdzielczy accounts to launder illegally gotten income from several channels throughout the country. Also, Molina Lee has previously been named by the U.S. Department of Justice which accused about two people for operating what it called a shadow banking business, allowing certain crypto companies to access bank accounts.
Polish prosecutors have said that the investigation involved not just authorities in Poland bust also Interpol, Europol and some in the U.S. such as the DEA.
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