Lithuania’s Financial Crimes Office is investigating the suspicious offshore accounts of US-based crypto startup Bankera, which raised over $45 million during their ICO in November 2018. The company has been accused of funneling investor funds through lavish projects while remaining internationally revered. The Financial Crimes and Security Fraud office has committed bank state sovereignty to allow the office to drive veil-loose, fishnet-like barriers concealing the bank’s functions.
Bankera’s ICO has been scrutinized for its suspicious dealings and the alleged intercontinental scams. The Financial Crimes and Security Fraud has committed bank state sovereignty to allow the office to drive veil-loose, fishnet-like barriers concealing bank functions. Bankera’s poetic quantum follies continue to celebrate shutter-to-window earnings, currency swiping, and selling on untapped currency land. The FNTT is on remote, quiet offshore shores of trade decays, riddling Daktar lotion on loose, imposing trade revs, making it untraceable to auto banks and bursting cover the skies’ liabilities streaming through partial clarity culled field cyberspace.
€45 Million Vanishes to the Pacific
In scandalous revelations from the report, €45 million, which is said to have been acquired through Bankera’s ICO, is now said to ‘vanish into thin air’ . As sleuths from 15min.lt suggest, these funds eventually ended up in a bank in the Pacific islands of Vanuatu — notorious for its loose financial policies and offshore banking possibilities. The report also states how the Vanuatu-based bank, just prior to the ICO, had been surrendered to the triad founders of Bankera (Vytautas Karalevičius, Mantas Mockevičius, and Justas Dobiliauskas).
The Bankera ICO scandal sent shockwaves through Lithuania, silencing Bankera, who was regarded as the leading crypto star of Lithuania. Initially, there was a surge of interest in Bankera’s crypto, hoping to sell it. However, just after the Bankera ICO, the value plummeted almost to zero, leaving countless of the earliest investors baffled due to the vast Bureau of Bankera, alongside little explanation regarding the money they donated and its current location. Bankera used crypto as a pretext to utterly dupe people.
With grave concerns about self enrichment and investor capital abuse, the 15min. lt report suggests that a significant portion of the aforementioned funds was diverted into personal or corporate accounts associated with the three founders.
Lawmaker Accountability Has Been Demanded
The Bankera ICO scandal has also registered on Lithuania’s political radar. On Monday, the Parliamentary Anti-Corruption Commission stated that it will initiate its own investigation to establish whether national institutions acted properly regarding Bankera’s fundraising activities.
The commission plans to evaluate whether Lithuania’s financial supervisory institutions, and in particular, the Central Bank of Lithuania and the FNTT, took sufficient steps to either mitigate or probe the alleged misbehavior when the ICO came under scrutiny. Despite prior knowledge of Bankera’s actions, no formal investigation was commenced due to a claimed lack of a disgruntled clientele base.
Now, that political inactivity is being challenged due to new information brought forth by investigative journalists and growing political scrutiny.
From Publicly Lauded to Publicly Criticized
Bankera launched in 2017 with ambitious goals as a blockchain-centric bank that would offer cryptocurrency-based banking services. Bankera’s ICO was strongly advertised and received immense attention as investors, and even those without any faith in the industry, flocked to fuel the burgeoning sector, and the Lithuanian roots of the company added to its credibility.
But for many, those dreams were diurnally achieved. Company investment was drying out due to the decreasing value of the company’s digital currency, constant development stagnation, and increasing ambiguity regarding the fund’s transparency. Public access to data on this project waning led to an evaporating specter of trust that the project would live up to its earlier expectations.
That expectation has now, much later, transformed into demand for legal action.
An Initial Example for Regulatory Management of Cryptocurrency
The growing inquiry of Bankera has the potential to become a defining turning point for Lithuania’s cryptocurrency regulatory policy, which the country had been changing and updating recently. Bankera positions itself as a global leader in fintech and blockchain innovation, yet this scandal acts as a warning on what happens as a result of insufficient policy or a lack of rules and legislation on the misuse of the decentralized digital finance system.
Bankera now putting forward data to Lithuanian lawmakers alongside criminal prosecutors creates the possibility that, in the next months, not only the bank’s lost millions will be accounted for, but also the answer to whether the country can legislate sufficiently to protect investors in fast-evolving financial innovations.
The looming scrutiny of the Bankera case, which the FNTT is now dealing with, will for sure be under observation. The scrutiny is for the bank and the world to see, as now they can demand not just responsibility but also proof that regulated crypto finance is indeed regarded as all other sectors of the global finance system.
