Investigative reporting by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and Lithuanian outlet 15min, summarized by Protos, alleges that the founders of Lithuanian crypto project Bankera (BNK) diverted a substantial portion of their ICO proceeds into a global luxury real estate portfolio instead of building the “bank for the blockchain era” they had promised investors. Bankera raised about €100 million from over 100,000 investors in a 2017–2018 ICO, but the project later collapsed, leaving investors effectively wiped out while the founders are reported to have benefited from opaque loan structures and property acquisitions in Europe and the Pacific. According to the investigation, more than €45 million from companies in the Bankera/SpectroCoin ecosystem flowed into Pacific Private Bank (PPB) in Vanuatu, a small bank the three founders quietly acquired near the end of the ICO. Leaked bank records and company documents cited by OCCRP indicate that these funds were used to back loans to companies controlled by the same founders, which then bought high-end properties including a roughly €1.1–2.5 million villa on the French Riviera (Èze), multiple luxury properties in Vilnius, Lithuania, and a beachfront resort in Vanuatu. Additional loans allegedly went directly to the founders for “personal use,” with the real estate and other high-end assets effectively financed by ICO money that investors had been told would fund cryptocurrency infrastructure and banking services. The case has become a prominent example in Europe’s crypto sector of how ICO structures and offshore banking can be used to reroute investor capital into insiders’ hands, and it has attracted attention from Lithuanian financial crime authorities.

AI-generated background, compiled from web sources — not editorial content.

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