Nexo seeks $3 billion in damages from Bulgaria over aborted investigation

• Nexo says the investigations tarnished its repute and hampered its progress.
• Bulgarian authorities dropped the Nexo case in December 2023, citing an absence of proof.

In considered one of at present’s largest cryptocurrency information, Nexo, a number one crypto lender that’s reportedly searching for $3 billion in damages from Bulgaria.

Particularly, as Reuters reported on Wednesday, Nexo AG, a Swiss arm of Nexo Capital, says final 12 months’s aborted felony investigation fully destroyed the corporate’s growth plans, together with a possible US itemizing.

Nexo recordsdata for arbitration with ICSID

Nexo, in a submitting with the World Financial institution’s Worldwide Centre for Settlement of Funding Disputes (ICSID), says Bulgaria’s investigation tainted its repute. It additionally wrecked shareholder worth.

As CoinJournal highlighted in December 2023, the Bulgarian prosecutor’s workplace introduced a termination of the felony investigations in opposition to Nexo and 4 of its executives, citing an absence of proof.

The prosecution’s transfer adopted practically a 12 months of investigations, with police having raided Nexo’s workplaces within the nation’s capital Sofia in January 2023. Among the many allegations levelled in opposition to the crypto lender and its high executives had been cash laundering, laptop fraud and unauthorised banking actions.

Regardless of the dropped case, Nexo contends the injury from the raids and allegations was immense. It filed for arbitration with the ICSID on January 18. Reuters experiences that Bulgaria’s finance ministry has acknowledged receipt of an arbitration request from the ICSID.

Whereas officers say an inter-departmental committee will overview this request and suggest subsequent steps, this doesn’t represent an “admission as to the substance of any claims or as an acceptance of any arbitral jurisdiction.”

ICSID, primarily based in Washington, USA, is a global arbitration establishment that handles disputes between nations and worldwide traders. A few of the nations ordered to pay vital damages to corporations embody Pakistan, Ecuador, and Venezuela.