In September 2019, the BBC began telling the incredible story of Ruzha Ignatova, the Bulgarian wanted by the FBI after defrauding investors of $4.5 billion (£3.54 billion) through her fake cryptocurrency before disappearing without a trace. In a new episode of the investigation, BBC Eye and Panorama investigate her close ties to organised crime boss Taki and allegations first published by BIRD that she was brutally murdered. Did the crypto queen enjoy the stolen billions or was she killed by the same people who were paid to protect her? BIRD journalist Dimitar Stoyanov joined the BBC’s investigation and is working on the ground in Bulgaria. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTnTToWEHvI
The Ghost of Taki
Richard Reinhardt, who launched OneCoin’s investigation into the U.S. Internal Revenue Service with the FBI, told the BBC about a key character that investigators had never previously publicly disclosed. We are talking about Christoforos Nikos Amanatidis – Taki. “We were told that an alleged major drug trafficker was responsible for her physical security,” Mr. Reinhardt said in his first interview since his retirement at the end of 2023. This coincided with the information we already had — U.S. prosecutors said in 2019 that Ms. Ignatova’s security chief was an important figure in organized crime in Bulgaria, but did not name him. “We have evidence that a very significant, if not the most important drug trafficker in Bulgaria was closely associated with OneCoin – he served as [Ruzha Ignatova’s personal bodyguard],” said an assistant prosecutor. It was the same “head of security” whom another U.S. government lawyer said had “been involved in the disappearance” of Ms. Ignatova in court a day earlier. This theory seems to be supported by leaked Europol documents seen by the BBC, which show that before Ruzha Ignatova disappeared in 2017, Bulgarian police had established links between her and Taki. Police documents say that Taki uses OneCoin’s financial network to launder the profits from drug trafficking. In his native Bulgaria, Taki has an almost mythical status – like El Chapo or Pablo Escobar. He is widely suspected of being the head of a Bulgarian organized crime group for drug trafficking. He and his accomplices have been investigated in Bulgaria for armed robbery, drug trafficking and murder, but Amanatidis has never been successfully convicted of anything. “When we talk about Taki, he is the head of the mafia in Bulgaria. He is extremely powerful,” said former Bulgarian Deputy Minister Ivan Hristanov, who in 2022 investigated allegations that Taki ran a criminal network with the help of corrupt officials – and believes this is the case. “Taki is a ghost. You’ll never see it. You will only hear about it. He speaks to you through other people. If you don’t listen, you just disappear from the face of the earth.” “The only person who could protect her [Ignatova] from all these investigations, including from foreign agencies, was Taki.” The BBC has sought comment from the Bulgarian government on the allegations of corrupt officials. There is no answer. The prosecutor’s office in the capital Sofia said that it “does not cover up crimes and persons who may have committed crimes.” Taki is now believed to live in Dubai, where Ruzha Ignatova bought a luxury penthouse and where her bank accounts received tens of millions of dollars from the OneCoin scam. Although it is not known how Taki and Ignatova met, or whether he was involved in OneCoin from the beginning, multiple sources say that they had a close personal relationship and that he was her daughter’s godfather. Bulgarian a source close to Ruzha Ignatova told the BBC that she may have paid Taki up to €100,000 a month for protection. There appear to be other financial ties between Ms. Ignatova and Taki. Europol documents mention a complex deal for the sale of a plot of land on Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast, which connects one of Ruzha Ignatova’s companies with Taki’s wife, Boryana Shehtova.
The secret police documents were handed over to the BBC by Frank Schneider, a former spy and adviser to Ms. Ignatova, who has since disappeared. He told us that his old boss had worked with “crooks” and “gangsters”. At Schneider’s interview at his home in France, he was under house arrest, awaiting extradition to the United States in connection with the OneCoin scheme. However, he was not ready to reveal names. “I’m not going to tell you who, because I have a family… This is a very serious organized crime.”
Karo: “Don’t think about it, it’s gone”
In 2022, Bulgarian investigative journalist Dimitar Stoyanov and his colleagues from the investigative news platform bird.bg received a police report that was found in the home of a murdered Bulgarian police officer. In the document, a police informant describes how he overheard Taki’s brother-in-law (Georgi Vassilev), who said in a drunken state that Ruzha Ignatova was killed on Taki’s orders at the end of 2018, and her body was dismembered and thrown from a yacht in the Ionian Sea. Dimitar Stoyanov told the BBC that this statement is “very, very possible”. The authenticity of the police document has been confirmed by Bulgarian officials, and many of Taki’s criminal associates believe the murder theory is true, Stoyanov said. The reasoning of the collaborators is that the wanted Ruzha Ignatova became a risk for Taki, who wanted to eliminate his ties with the OneCoin scam. Among them is Krasimir Kamenov, known as Karo, wanted by Interpol on murder charges. Dimitar Stoyanov says that Karo told him that he heard Taki discussing their joint criminal business in front of Ruzha Ignatova, and when Karo asked him if he should do this, Taki replied: “Don’t think about her, she is no longer there.”
Karo also claims to have spoken to the CIA about Taki, including the accusation that Taki ordered the murder of Ms. Ignatova.
In May 2023, Karo was murdered at his home in Cape Town, along with his wife and two others who worked for him. South African police are still looking for the killers.
An umbrella for Taki from the authorities
Just a few days ago, after receiving a request for comment from the BBC, the Bulgarian Prosecutor’s Office issued an opinion that there was no Bulgarian trace in the murder of Karo. However, in the police document with the allegations of Ruja’s murder by Taki, it is written that Amanatidis paid for an umbrella stretched by the Bulgarian Prosecutor’s Office and the Ministry of the Interior, and the head of the Homicide Department at the GDNP, Mihail Naumov, is named by name. The special relationship of the authorities with Taki also became the reason for the hysterical reaction of the prosecutor’s office after the publication of the report on the alleged murder of Ruja. In a special press conference with the participation of former Prosecutor General Ivan Geshev and the current acting Borislav Sarafov, the journalists from BIRD were identified as conspirators planning a “coup” against senior police officers and magistrates and personally against Ivan Geshev. Subsequently, however, Geshev told Assist. editor of BIRD Atanas Tchobanov on the sidelines of the European Parliament in Strasbourg that he had been misled by “Sarafov, the Euro, this round…”.
As an investigation by BIRD showed, Taki’s name appears in the verdict against the Hammers gang as the creator and organizer of an organized crime group, but he himself has not been charged, which is a legal absurdity. Former Prosecutor General Sotir Tsatsarov played a decisive role in removing him from the Hammers organized crime group, according to BIRD sources in the Prosecutor’s Office.
Former Bulgarian Deputy Minister Ivan Hristanov believes that the murder of Karo is related to Taki. “Some people had to be suspended because they knew too much about Taki. It was a kind of public execution that seemed more like a message: Be careful who you deal with,” he said. Hristanov led a battle to recapture the Kapitan Andreevo border crossing, taken over by a thug business associated with Taki. BIRD investigations also showed Taki’s business ties with activists of GERB and ITN. The scale of the connections and dependencies in power with the crime boss is also evidenced by the fact that Deputy Speaker of Parliament Rositsa Kirova is connected through her brother and property deals with the crime boss. Since the publication of the accusations of the murder of Ruzha Ignatova, BIRD journalists began to receive death threats. Dimitar Stoyanov had to temporarily leave Bulgaria for the fourth time in his career. /Expect details/ Leading collage: Christoforos Amanatidis – Taki and Svetla, Karo’s ex-wife, Ruzha Ignatova, Krasimir Kamenov – Karo.
Делото “Чуковете на Таки” се удари в специализираната съдебна наковалня
Материалът BBC confirms Taki’s connection to Ruzha Ignatova and the OneCoin scheme е публикуван за пръв път на BIRD.
