The European Union Police Service (Europol) has included Ruja Ignatova, the founder of the OneCoin pyramid, on its list of most wanted criminals. Relevant information is published on the agency’s website.

Ignatova’s card states that she was charged with fraud “including against the financial interests of the European Communities under the Convention of 26 July 1995”.

“A reward of up to 5,000 Euros is offered for important information leading to the arrest of a criminal. […] The award is only for private individuals, not public officials whose professional duties involve the prosecution of criminal acts, the Europol website said.

According to Europol, Ignatova’s whereabouts have not been known since 25 October 2017.

Ruja Ignatova co-founded the OneCoin financial pyramid with Sebastian Greenwood in 2014.

The project was initially positioned as a highly profitable cryptocurrency, in which investors profit not only from the growth of the asset, but also to attract new participants.

In November 2019, the Southern District Court of New York found OneCoin attorney Mark Scott guilty of laundering nearly $400 million, Ignatova was charged in absentia in the United States.

In March 2020, Konstantin Ignatov, brother of the founder of OneCoin, was detained at the Los Angeles airport. He subsequently pleaded guilty to several charges and faces up to 90 years in prison.

The US government managed to delay Ignatov’s sentence, saying that cooperation with him was not yet complete.

One of the defendants in the class action lawsuit filed by investors against the organizers of the pyramid was the financial conglomerate Bank of New York Mellon.

In August 2021, Italian authorities charged 14 people linked to OneCoin with aggravated fraud. According to law enforcement officials, around 11 million euros were processed in favor of the pyramid from local banks, of which the organizers collected around 5 million euros from 3,700 residents of South Tyrol.

Recall that in October the media rated Ignatova’s London penthouse for £13.5m.