Episode Transcript
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0:00
This is the BBC.
0:02
This podcast is supported
0:04
by advertising outside the UK.
0:10
For over a decade,
0:13
pair of mug shots have side
0:15
by side on the FBI's website.
0:17
These individuals are considered
0:20
as terrorists.
0:20
The cause of their alleged terrorist actions,
0:23
the environment.
0:24
Estimates are a quarter billion dollars in
0:26
damages.
0:27
How far is too far to go
0:29
to stop the planet burning?
0:31
If it's not me, then it's who. And if it's
0:33
not now, learned into whack into whack.
0:35
Burn
0:35
wild. Find us wherever
0:38
you get your podcasts.
0:43
Hi. This
0:44
is Georgia, the producer of the missing crypto
0:46
queen. Before
0:47
we bring you this new episode, I wanted
0:49
to jump in to quickly tell you about a new podcast
0:52
I've been working on, which is out now.
0:54
It's called Bern Wilde and
0:56
is presented by Lea Sottile. For
0:58
almost two years, we've been recording with
1:00
one of the world's most one fugitive
1:03
environmentalists. The FBI
1:05
say that he and the group he was a part of
1:07
are ecoterrorists. But
1:09
as with the missing crypto queen, things
1:11
have aren't what they've seen. So before
1:14
we get into Crypto Queen, here's a short
1:16
trailer and listen to the end of this episode
1:18
for a longer preview.
1:19
How many people
1:21
who have been on the FBI's most wanted
1:23
this? I ever sat down for a podcast
1:26
with the BBC.
1:27
For over a decade, a pair of
1:30
mug shots have lived side by side
1:32
on the FBI's website.
1:34
These individuals are considered
1:36
tariffs. In
1:37
two thousand five, they were called the number
1:39
one domestic terror threat in
1:41
America.
1:41
Estimates are a quarter billion dollars in
1:44
damages. The cause
1:44
of their alleged terrorist actions,
1:47
the environment. Our purpose
1:49
was direct action to
1:51
disrupt environmental traction.
1:54
How far is too far to go
1:56
to stop the planet burning?
1:57
If it's not me, then it's who. And
1:59
if it's not now and then it's wet and then it's wet and then
2:01
wet.
2:02
Bern Wild. Find us now
2:04
on BBC sounds.
2:07
BBC sounds, music, radio,
2:10
podcasts,
2:11
Quick warning before we begin. This
2:13
episode contains strong language.
2:21
Doctor
2:21
Rouge has been missing now for nearly
2:23
five years. But
2:25
far from fading into obscurity, It
2:27
feels like finding her is
2:29
more important than ever.
2:31
i'm an illusion
2:32
And now,
2:35
We're not the only ones looking for her.
2:41
allegedly cry cry investors
2:43
are more than four billion dollars. It's
2:45
been a while since the last episode, so
2:48
here's a quick reminder of where we
2:50
left off. In twenty
2:52
fourteen, doctor Ruja Ignatova
2:54
told investors that she'd created
2:56
a brand new cryptocurrency that
2:59
would make them all rich. She called
3:01
it one coin.
3:02
And I believe we are very special
3:04
network
3:06
because we really act as
3:08
a family.
3:09
By late twenty sixteen, doctor
3:11
Ruja was jetting around the world, addressing
3:14
her adoring fans. One
3:16
family.
3:16
You're amazing, guys.
3:19
And as many as a million
3:20
people from almost every country
3:23
on Earth, had invested billions
3:25
in her promise of a financial
3:27
revolution. Three goods. You
3:30
sold two goods. You
3:32
did that for one But
3:36
on the twenty fifth of October twenty
3:38
seventeen, as her investors were
3:40
waiting to turn their one coin into
3:42
dollars or euros, doctor Ruja
3:45
boarded a Ryanair flight from Sofia
3:47
Bulgaria to Athens Greece. and
3:49
disappearing.
3:53
She
3:53
didn't react on the email, not on the WhatsApp,
3:56
or nothing, nothing helped. and
3:58
nobody knew where
3:59
to push up. One
4:02
coin was just an old fashioned
4:04
pyramid scheme. It
4:06
didn't have the underlying technology
4:08
needed to power a cryptocurrency. I
4:11
know they didn't have blockchain. They
4:13
couldn't have.
4:15
For four years, Georgia Cat and I have
4:17
been trying to expose the fake cryptocurrency
4:20
one coin and find out what happened
4:22
to its founder, doctor Ruja,
4:24
when she stepped off that Ryanair flight.
4:27
In twenty nineteen, we traveled
4:29
all over the world following leads.
4:31
Really, really well produced. It's
4:33
very slick. Hello?
4:35
Can I
4:37
ask who owns this boat? Mhmm. This
4:39
is
4:39
something I
4:42
know. Yeah. The cigar boat is pretty
4:44
overwhelming. We felt like
4:46
we'd got close. Possible. It's
4:48
possible that she could have been there.
4:50
Maybe closer than we realized. She
4:52
was there and missed one life sitting at
4:54
the table. If seen you without knowing it was
4:56
her, you were in the same room. And
4:58
since we released the podcast, Law
5:00
enforcement around the world has
5:02
finally started catching up with some
5:04
of doctor Rouge's sidekicks, including
5:08
her younger brother, Constantine. he's
5:10
currently detained in the US after
5:13
pleading guilty to money laundering
5:15
and fraud charges. But
5:17
doctor Ruja is still
5:19
on the run, possibly protected
5:21
by shadowy people and
5:23
vast amounts of cash. The
5:26
longer she has money, the
5:29
safer is ship.
5:31
It feels like the net is starting
5:33
to close in on the missing
5:35
Crypto Queen. The
5:37
question now is, who
5:39
will find her first is,
5:41
mister Habitsum. We have the plaintiff,
5:43
the doctor Ruja Ignatova.
5:45
We're not gonna stop looking for it. That's what it
5:47
comes down it. I think you need to start looking
5:49
at the very, very, very top of that
5:51
country. Eventually, I'm
5:53
confident we'll find it. I
5:56
I'm the person who ordered the Sesame
5:58
Cream.
6:02
This is the missing Crypto
6:04
Queen. Episode ten,
6:07
to do bio files.
6:15
So we just
6:15
get straight in there. Sure. Sure. Stop
6:17
talking brilliant. This is Esther
6:19
Creona, and I
6:21
have to include this bit She was
6:23
part of Israel's winning Eurovision
6:26
Song contest team in nineteen
6:28
seventy eight.
6:29
How
6:32
many people have ever worked abroad?
6:35
I've
6:35
never met a Eurovision song contestant.
6:38
Let alone a winner.
6:38
That's funny. After winning
6:40
Eurovision, Esther moved to
6:43
the US where she got married and
6:45
raised two children. In
6:47
twenty sixteen, her husband
6:49
passed away. And
6:49
my husband left me some money
6:52
after he passed away. This money
6:54
was supposed to be for
6:56
a condo or for
6:57
an apartment for myself or a townhouse
6:59
or something, you know, to to
7:01
be secure. So I
7:03
have roof over my
7:05
head. A
7:06
few months later, Ester's son
7:08
told her about an exciting new
7:11
cryptocurrency
7:12
called one coin.
7:13
I just listened to
7:15
my son and I decided to help him out.
7:18
And him and his friend convinced
7:20
me to invest in one coin.
7:23
And he simply believed
7:25
that one coin will be
7:27
the biggest, you know, crypto
7:31
in the world.
7:32
like
7:33
more
7:34
bigger than Bitcoin. Esther's
7:36
story
7:36
is like so many other one coin
7:38
investors we've heard making this series.
7:41
She was impressed by the crypto queen's
7:43
impeccable credentials and
7:45
drawn in by the prospect of a financial
7:47
revolution. plus
7:49
the chance of getting rich.
7:52
We listen to her all the time. We
7:54
read I mean, my son even
7:56
went there to Bulgaria.
7:58
Oh. Yeah. And he was at the
8:01
main office there. Right.
8:03
And he said nothing looks suspicious at
8:05
all.
8:06
What did you think of her? Kind
8:08
of admired her
8:10
and her the way she was
8:13
talking in the way she believed in
8:15
her dream and
8:17
I truly thought that she's
8:20
for real. Pretty
8:21
soon, Esther decided
8:23
to invest.
8:24
I put all together approximately
8:27
one hundred and forty
8:28
three thousand dollars
8:30
I
8:32
know. I
8:35
became a little greedy, I
8:37
guess. It
8:38
was only when Rouge's brother Constantine
8:40
was arrested in twenty nineteen.
8:43
The D'estaire realized she'd been
8:45
fooled. and that her money was
8:47
gone. What does it
8:49
sort of mean to you financially?
8:51
I
8:51
was losing my my big
8:53
house that I lived with my
8:56
husband and I had
8:58
to rent a year ago, I had to
9:00
rent a townhouse condo.
9:02
It
9:02
felt like death Absolutely. I
9:04
was so devastated. And
9:06
I had to start from from
9:08
a.
9:12
Many investors put everything they
9:14
had into one coin. Even
9:16
now years later, they're
9:18
still struggling with the loss. But
9:20
there is a glimmer of hope
9:22
for the victims. When
9:24
financial frauds like one coin
9:26
collapse, there are ways to get
9:28
some of the money back. The
9:30
key is to identify assets
9:32
or money that belong to the guilty
9:34
party which the authorities
9:36
can seize and return to
9:38
victims, but it's a
9:40
slow and difficult process. We
9:43
know Rugeo had plenty of houses,
9:45
cars, businesses, bank
9:47
accounts. The trouble is
9:49
she knew how to hide them The
9:52
money investors poured into one coin
9:54
has ended up in a web of
9:56
offshore accounts, fake owners, and
9:58
complicated corporate
9:59
structures. So along
10:02
with several other one coin investors,
10:04
Esther hired a lawyer to help
10:06
identify Rouge's assets around
10:08
the world in the hope she might
10:10
see some of her money again. The
10:12
best case scenario here, if
10:14
things go well, what are you hoping
10:17
to achieve with this lawsuit?
10:19
I hope to get some
10:21
of my money back. If
10:23
you cannot get everything all
10:25
of it, I I hope to get some of
10:27
it. Anything will be
10:29
helpful for me right now. And
10:31
there's more than just money at stake.
10:33
It feels
10:33
lousy. It feels really bad.
10:36
because that's the only money that I
10:38
had. And and she is,
10:40
like, living in, you know,
10:43
as a queen and I have to
10:45
fight
10:45
for my security.
10:49
A few
10:53
months back, a whistleblower who'd
10:55
listen to our podcast got in touch with
10:57
Ester's lawyers saying they had
10:59
confidential documents that might
11:01
help. These are the
11:03
Dubai files. We
11:05
were also sent them. They're
11:07
hundreds of pages, court
11:10
documents, bank letters, photographs,
11:13
A lot of them are in Arabic and most
11:15
are photocopies blurred
11:17
and poor quality as if someone
11:19
had to copy them in a rush. As
11:21
a
11:21
journalist, you sometimes receive
11:24
leaked documents like this and your
11:26
first job is to verify
11:28
them somehow so you know what you're
11:30
dealing with. That process has
11:32
taken us months, and we couldn't
11:34
verify everything. But we
11:36
spoke off record with at least some
11:38
of the people named in the Dubai files
11:40
and found and reviewed other public
11:42
documents like court records.
11:47
The
11:47
Dubai files appear to show
11:49
that Eurasia amassed tens of
11:51
millions of dollars in Dubai
11:53
bank accounts. money that
11:55
could still potentially go to
11:57
one coin investors like a
11:59
stare. And maybe these
12:01
files could offer us clues about
12:04
where doctor Ruja fled.
12:06
It
12:08
looks like her millions were
12:11
frozen because of money laundering concerns
12:13
two years before she vanished.
12:15
And in response, Rouge
12:18
has sought the help of an influential
12:20
shake. is
12:21
actually shipped out. Ben
12:23
Faisal, Ben Sultan, Ben
12:25
Salem, Al Qasimhi. Yep. Casimhi to
12:27
friends by me. That's fine.
12:29
This is Youssef Taha. He's a
12:31
BBC journalist and former Arabic
12:33
teacher who's helping us make sense of
12:35
the Dubai files. Al Qasami
12:37
are the royal family of Sachar.
12:40
Okay. And he's a chef as well. So
12:43
That's a region, Sachar
12:45
is one of the seven emperors of the
12:47
United Arab Emirates. it's a
12:49
confederation, the united arm emirates.
12:51
So it's seven emirates.
12:53
Each has its own emir,
12:55
our shaver. And
12:58
the capital of the United Arab Emirates
13:00
is Abu Dhabi. charger is one of
13:02
the not so rich, but
13:04
certainly not poorer Emirates.
13:06
what does it mean to be a shake of if
13:09
he's a shake and his family is
13:11
sort of the royal family, where does
13:13
that position him how powerful he be?
13:15
Right. very powerful.
13:17
All the shapes
13:20
of the seven United Arab
13:22
Emirates that related
13:24
somewhere in their
13:26
lineage. They are all related. But
13:28
if you're a shake in Sharjah,
13:30
you are you basically have
13:32
connections to all the government departments,
13:34
to the powerful people. You're you're someone that
13:36
can lie. The government has connections to
13:38
you. Right. And
13:40
if you haven't gone next just do that.
13:42
Yeah. You're just powerful and
13:44
whatever you say happens. According
13:49
to the Dubai files, In late
13:51
twenty fifteen, Ruger
13:53
handed over control of Onecoin
13:55
Limited to shake out Cassini along
13:57
with the Frozen Millions something
13:59
we think
13:59
she alluded to in an email
14:02
to a one coin colleague, which was
14:04
later read out in court.
14:05
I have a meeting next week with one of
14:08
the shakes in Dubai and we'll try to
14:10
get something done for us, but
14:12
we'll discuss with you only in
14:14
person and if I get
14:16
results. Could
14:17
the deal have been this? That
14:19
sheikal Cassini could take control
14:21
of the frozen money using
14:23
his influence to unlock the
14:25
cash. And what would Ruger get in
14:27
return? The
14:29
Dubai files suggest she might have received
14:31
millions in big coin,
14:33
but it's not clear.
14:36
Whatever it was, the Sheikh
14:38
soon wrote to Dubai's attorney general,
14:40
Vouching for Russia. Doctor Ruja
14:42
Ignatova is a distinguished international
14:45
businesswoman whose clients are
14:47
in millions worldwide. and
14:49
freezing her funds in the UAE
14:52
is an affront to her and will
14:54
tarnish her investment, economic,
14:56
and diplomatic experience. And
15:00
here's an even stranger thing.
15:02
In twenty twenty, so
15:04
two years after she disappeared,
15:07
and after the US had published an
15:09
indictment against her, Rouge's
15:11
millions were unfrozen by the
15:13
Dubai authorities. miller
15:15
had rough man raheem Since
15:19
then, there's been a long legal dispute
15:21
between Rubius lawyers and Sheikh
15:23
Al Qasimi and ultimately, it
15:25
appears to be over who
15:27
can claim the unfrozen millions.
15:30
Finally, in June twenty twenty
15:32
two, Shake Alkassemi one.
15:35
And
15:35
right now, we're still trying to
15:37
figure out what's happened to that
15:39
money. We've
15:40
asked Shake Al Qasimi multiple
15:42
times about his dealings with doctor
15:44
Ruja. His
15:45
lawyer told us, you do
15:46
not have any correct information on
15:49
the subject. With
15:50
so much of her money tied up
15:53
there, the files led us to
15:55
an obvious question.
15:57
Could
15:57
doctor Ruja be
15:59
hiding
15:59
in Dubai?
16:08
After
16:08
Ruger vanished, Constantine Ignatov
16:11
took over the running of one coin from his
16:13
big sister he couldn't have
16:15
been more different. For
16:17
one thing, Constantine is covered
16:19
in tattoos and is a tea
16:21
total vegan. as
16:23
Ruger traveled the world selling one
16:25
coin. He was driving a
16:27
forklift truck and a Porsche factory
16:29
in Germany Konstantin
16:31
didn't know anything about cryptocurrency,
16:34
finance, or multi level marketing.
16:36
He preferred spending time
16:38
listening to heavy metal. working
16:40
out and looking
16:41
after stray dogs. Rougea
16:44
originally hired her brother as a
16:46
personal assistant where he mostly
16:48
booked hotels and ordered
16:50
luxury jewelry. But
16:51
soon after her disappearance, Constantine
16:54
was giving talks and crooting
16:56
investors just like his sister.
16:59
Here he is in
17:01
Argentina in twenty
17:03
eighteen. whole world
17:05
is watching today. More than
17:07
three million people from the network
17:10
and all of the people outside who don't
17:12
like us. Also watching Konstantin
17:18
was arrested in twenty nineteen
17:20
at Los Angeles Airport. After
17:22
initially claiming he'd done nothing wrong,
17:24
he eventually plead guilty to
17:26
multiple charges, including fraud,
17:29
and money laundering and agreed to
17:32
work with the US authorities as a
17:34
witness in any one coin
17:36
related court cases. And in late twenty
17:38
nineteen, Constantine was
17:40
in court in New York testifying
17:42
against Mark Scott Ruge's
17:45
investment manager who was on trial for
17:47
money laundering. So after going through
17:49
the Dubai files, Georgia and
17:51
I trolled back through Constantine's testimony
17:54
looking for clues. We
17:57
figured if anyone knew where doctor
17:59
Ruja went after Athens, it
18:01
was Constantine. When was the last
18:03
time that you saw Two days before
18:05
she disappeared. When was the last time that
18:07
you communicated with her in any
18:09
way? The day she disappeared.
18:11
But Constantine did let slip that Rouge had bought a
18:14
mansion in Dubai. You mentioned a moment
18:16
ago that Rouge had also bought properties in
18:18
Dubai. Is that correct? Yes.
18:21
did you ever visit either of those properties?
18:23
I spent one night in the penthouse
18:26
and I've seen the mansion, but
18:28
it was still under construction,
18:30
so it wasn't finished yet.
18:32
Do you know approximately how much the
18:34
mansion cost? I heard
18:36
her talking about twenty million.
18:38
A mansion
18:40
in Dubai seems like the perfect
18:42
place for Russia to lay low.
18:45
and still enjoy the high
18:47
life.
18:48
Constantine who is currently at some
18:50
unknown location in the US in
18:52
a waiting sentencing wouldn't or couldn't
18:55
talk to us. So how
18:57
do you
18:57
find a house in a city of three
18:59
point five million people?
19:01
when all you have to go on is the word
19:04
mansion and a price.
19:06
So yeah, it
19:07
was it was a bit of a a mission to talk through
19:09
a middle. So introduce you to
19:11
Rob, our new team member. He's
19:14
a journalist who's brilliant of
19:16
finding out stuff that dodgy people
19:18
don't want you to know. So we thought, oh, perhaps,
19:21
they met, although he denied
19:23
meeting her since she since she
19:25
disappeared in court. The first thing he did was
19:27
to look through all of
19:29
Constantine's social media accounts, looking
19:31
for photos that might offer some
19:33
clues about Dubai and this mysterious mansion.
19:37
So I just started looking through his
19:39
prolific social media accounts or
19:41
they were prolific until he
19:43
was arrested. And on Instagram, there was
19:45
a post at his
19:47
birthday on the fifteenth of February
19:49
twenty eighteen. February twenty
19:51
eighteen. That's five months
19:53
after Ruger disappeared. He says,
19:55
just woke up and already have two
19:57
hundred plus messages. You crazy guys,
19:59
birthday mode on, hashtag selfie hashtag
20:02
me. Hashtag where they have the Tumi
20:04
hashtag. It's a selfie. It's
20:06
tagged in Bulgaria. But the
20:08
background of the photograph did
20:10
not look like Bulgaria, certainly not in the middle
20:12
of winter. So It just doesn't
20:14
look right. It just looks weird. Yeah. There's like
20:16
a big skyline. Skyscrapers the
20:18
background. There's a palm tree and possibly a
20:21
mosque in Minaret, so it looked kind of Middle
20:23
Eastern. And it just just
20:24
didn't add up. So we needed some help
20:27
basically. Hi, everyone. My name
20:29
is Ayun Miroi, so I'm an open
20:31
source investigative journalist.
20:33
Ayun is a very special
20:35
type of journalist. He
20:37
for BBCI investigations on
20:40
something called open source
20:42
intelligence. All of us
20:44
share so much information about
20:46
ourselves on line, and people
20:48
like I am are able to take that
20:50
information and make sense of
20:52
it. His particular skill
20:54
is to work out precisely where
20:57
and when photos and videos
20:59
were taken. So
21:00
basically, just spending hours on
21:03
Internet googling stuff
21:05
to verify content. You just kind of follow the
21:08
breadcrumbs, writes the sort of digital breadcrumbs,
21:10
and you find as much elements
21:12
as possible. to be
21:14
hundred and fifty percent sure that you've got it
21:15
right. Robsen I
21:17
am Constantine's Instagram
21:20
post. There was one
21:21
handy clue a
21:23
building in
21:23
the far distance that looked a bit
21:26
like a bottle opener. It was a
21:28
long
21:28
shot, but check out what
21:30
I am did with one
21:32
photo.
21:33
took a screenshot
21:35
of the bottom up in
21:37
the building and she started like, oh, hey,
21:39
if we can do image
21:41
with a search. Take the image, put
21:43
it into search engines, try to
21:45
see if you find other image
21:48
with the same elements, with the same characters, with
21:50
the same buildings. First, I thought
21:52
it'll be easy, you know, there's a DynaScast Gripen,
21:55
it's a big city By the
21:57
evening, I have something for robe. But by
21:59
the evening, I didn't
21:59
have something for robe, and that's
22:02
where, you know, you need to be patient.
22:04
And you know, stop breathing and
22:07
diving. You know, spend
22:09
hours digging through, one after a
22:11
couple of hours of of digging through. that was
22:13
an image which had a building in
22:15
it that looked very similar and that
22:17
image was basically a thumbnail for
22:19
YouTube video. And in the background of
22:22
that video, you could see a building that will crack the
22:24
photo opener we had in the
22:26
image of Constantine. Get
22:28
like a buzz when you get that
22:30
match? Are you like, yes. Right. Here we go.
22:32
We're on it. Not an absolute
22:34
buzz, like a a tiny buzz.
22:37
I got a little kind of start off a bus. You could
22:39
say like, oh, I'm on the right track,
22:41
a mini bus. Except something
22:43
didn't add up. but it was a
22:45
big problem. The line of
22:48
skyscrapers and the order of the buildings I
22:50
could see in that YouTube
22:52
video was not matching The
22:54
buildings look like they were
22:56
in reverse order and that kind
22:58
of bothered me for for quite
23:00
a while
23:01
until every guy's weight constant
23:03
in image is a selfie. If
23:05
it's a
23:05
selfie, I'm seeing a mirror of
23:08
what the human eye would have
23:10
seen. And so I feed image and there,
23:12
boom, of skylight was
23:14
perfectly matching in terms
23:15
of order. We're on the right track
23:17
to find it. to
23:20
get a mini buzz. I think that's where
23:22
the the big buzz came in exactly. Then
23:25
he
23:25
tried to work out the rough distance
23:27
and possible eye line
23:29
from where the photo was taken. So we
23:31
got
23:31
the Minera and we got that
23:33
pond of water. We could
23:36
start matching specific elements
23:38
in constant Then he used Google
23:40
Earth to identify other
23:42
smaller features in constant in
23:44
photo. trying to narrow it down
23:46
and down. And there is one element that's
23:48
actually you can even spot from satellite
23:50
images in constant image in
23:53
the background like a sort of waterfall
23:55
thing pushing maybe around ninety nine percent
23:57
should have got it. But I want to look
23:59
for more That's
24:00
where I kind of came across a gold mine listener,
24:02
dear listener. He's actually
24:04
matched
24:04
little stains on the wall from
24:07
the Constantine photo. until
24:12
Mine, I can say for sure enough. This
24:14
is where it's with the image at a
24:16
hundred and fifty percent.
24:18
In
24:20
the springs
24:22
one,
24:23
in Dubai. What? I thought
24:25
you were gonna say, I think it's Dubai.
24:27
He didn't just say Dubai.
24:29
He gave us the full
24:32
address.
24:32
and no one else has said this. You know,
24:34
nobody knows where this is. This
24:36
is
24:36
unbelievable. And I cannot believe
24:39
we've got this far, but now
24:41
we've got to decide what do we do? Now we got
24:43
an address in Dubai. We can't just turn up and knock
24:45
on the door. Yeah. And
24:47
that's that's a whole another
24:49
problem. This
24:51
could be anyone's
24:54
property, of course.
24:56
Maybe comp and Tim just
24:58
rented it from Airbnb.
25:00
Or maybe he was just
25:02
staying with an old friend, but
25:04
I am found something else.
25:06
He
25:07
trolled through some old real
25:09
estate websites and found
25:12
out that this property was on the
25:14
market in twenty sixteen
25:16
for seventeen million Emirati
25:18
deer homes, roughly the same amount
25:21
Constantine gave in court.
25:23
for
25:23
how much Ruger paid for her
25:26
mansion. Even
25:27
so, it
25:28
could still be a coincidence.
25:30
but
25:30
then we managed to get hold of an old
25:33
Dubai property database and
25:35
ran the address through that.
25:37
Before
25:37
I tell you what we found, Let
25:40
me remind you of another key character
25:42
in this story. Let's
25:43
give a warm
25:47
applause for our creator,
25:49
our founder, our lovely
25:53
doctor Ruja. The
25:55
voice introducing Ruja on
25:57
age at London's Wembley Arena in twenty
25:59
sixteen was Sebastian Greenwood.
26:03
He
26:03
co founded one coin with Ruja,
26:08
Sebastian, who's a British Swedish
26:10
national, is a gifted
26:12
salesman in his mid forties with
26:14
a long history in multilevel marketing.
26:18
Sebastian knew how to work
26:20
a crowd. Here he is a
26:22
frenzied one coin event in Malaysia in
26:25
twenty seventeen.
26:33
Sebastian
26:33
and Russia probably met
26:35
in twenty thirteen where they came
26:37
up with the idea for one coin together.
26:43
His one email from Ruger to
26:45
Sebastian just a few
26:47
weeks before the company was
26:49
launched. You
26:49
as the magic sales machine
26:52
and me as someone who really can work
26:54
with numbers, legal, and back you
26:56
up in a good and professional way. we
26:58
could really make it big, like
27:00
MLM meets bit of Wall
27:02
Street. It was rumored
27:04
that Ruzia and Sebastian were more
27:06
than just business partners According
27:08
to some, they were lovers
27:11
too. In
27:11
twenty eighteen, around a
27:13
year after Russia vanished, Sebastien was
27:16
arrested in Thailand and extradited
27:18
to the US where he's
27:20
currently in prison awaiting trial.
27:22
some of the people were here speaking
27:24
to IAM about the house,
27:26
the property, and Dubai.
27:29
So back to our war room, which
27:31
is my garden, where we're trying
27:33
to figure out who owns this
27:36
property. This
27:36
databases. So it's got people's contact details, their
27:39
names. Some of it is like limited companies.
27:41
But I reckon eighty percent of this
27:43
database was people's real names and
27:45
it was split into all the different
27:47
regions. That's a massive amount. For
27:49
a lot. Yeah. Rob knows you're
27:51
a lot because you've
27:52
been looking through them. Yeah. Look you
27:54
may. So, eventually, I
27:55
see by matching the geolocation that I
27:58
had the right plot eventually. Right. And that
27:59
then gave you what. That
28:02
then gave me the name of the owner,
28:05
which is Sebastian
28:08
Greenwood. Yeah.
28:08
The co founder, of one
28:10
coin, founder of one coin.
28:14
Sebastian
28:15
was named as a co
28:17
director on a firm, Ruger
28:20
used to buy a five thousand
28:22
square foot penthouse in
28:24
Dubai in the exclusive Palm
28:26
Jumira area. That's the one
28:28
Constantine also mentioned in court.
28:30
We don't quite know what's really
28:32
going on with the mansion, but
28:34
it feels like a strong lead.
28:37
a new address. Now, we
28:39
need to decide what to do.
28:44
If it
28:46
was
28:46
the UK, we would
28:48
have just
28:48
turned up and knocked on
28:51
the door. But advisers at the
28:53
BBC told us we shouldn't
28:55
go there in person. If
28:57
Russia was well connected in Dubai
29:00
as journalists we could find
29:02
ourselves in some trouble. We
29:04
found out the mansion
29:06
itself was part of an exclusive gated
29:09
community with its own security
29:11
staff. We were
29:12
stumped, and we were
29:15
getting hungry. Hi.
29:18
It's Steven here for the Krispy
29:20
Krembs. We might not be able to go to
29:22
the mansion, but we could
29:24
send a food delivery to
29:26
see if anyone's home. Now to make sure
29:28
we weren't getting the delivery person into
29:31
any trouble, we decided to
29:33
pretend
29:33
it was a wrong address
29:36
and not ever mention Ruja,
29:39
Sebastian, or
29:39
my name. Forty two
29:42
AED. No.
29:42
It can't be that cheap. Can't it? or do you
29:44
pull out one doughnut? You didn't take
29:47
him. Well, he's not gonna help us
29:49
now with this. What do you think is gonna
29:51
happen? No one in. Oh,
29:53
he's there. He's there. He suddenly
29:55
got there. It's the kind of thing that the
29:57
FBI would do just before they bust your door
29:59
down, it isn't it? Should I call
30:01
him? Has he been enough time middling
30:04
around? I'm
30:05
the person who
30:07
ordered the Krispy Krembs.
30:09
Did you find the house? Have
30:12
you tried to knock on the door?
30:19
is there nobody in?
30:21
Thanks for trying, I guess. Just
30:23
keep the doughnuts.
30:25
All we
30:26
wanted to do at this point was find
30:29
out if anyone lives there.
30:31
We reached out to Sebastian Greenwood
30:33
via his attorneys to ask about
30:36
the mansion could Ruggia have visited, does he still
30:38
own it? They didn't reply.
30:40
We also wrote to Constantine's lawyers
30:42
about his visit to the property,
30:45
but they didn't get back to us either. We tried
30:47
people living nearby. They told
30:49
us someone was still living in
30:52
the mansion, but no one had seen a
30:54
person resembling RougeA.
30:56
We
30:56
also spoke to a former FBI
30:58
agent called Karen Greenoway,
31:00
Now she
31:01
hasn't worked on the one coin case,
31:03
but knows a lot about
31:05
tracking criminals to Dubai. I can tell
31:07
you from personal experience, you really
31:09
were worked very hard to try
31:11
to build relationships with
31:14
UAE law enforcement authorities to
31:17
address the situation where we
31:19
had, you know, particularly transnational organized
31:21
crime criminals who are going to
31:23
UAE and hanging out, and I can tell you
31:25
that we've got zero
31:28
zero assistance.
31:29
We're working on a sort of theory
31:32
of our own here thatclusion may
31:34
have been living in Dubai
31:36
in in in early two thousand and
31:38
eighteen. Now if
31:40
she were, is it
31:42
possible that both the Dubai authorities
31:45
and the FBI would have been
31:48
aware of this fact, but
31:50
neither were able to do well. The
31:52
FBI weren't able and the Dubai
31:54
authorities weren't interested in
31:56
doing anything about it.
31:58
Absolutely. It's
32:00
entirely possible that the FBI knew
32:03
that she was there. And then on flip I
32:05
have no doubt that the Dubai authorities
32:07
knew that she was there because, again, they
32:09
do have this very you
32:11
know, on on technologically oriented,
32:15
you know, surveillance state.
32:18
We asked Dubai's government if
32:20
they had any evidence of Russian living in
32:22
the Emirates or if they received any
32:25
requests from the US relating to
32:27
her. but
32:27
they did not
32:30
reply. We've been
32:32
monitoring the mansion for the last few
32:35
months. and it looks like
32:37
Rugeo probably isn't there. But
32:39
the property still is.
32:41
And that's something because if we're
32:43
right about the mansion, the authorities
32:45
could seize it, sell it,
32:47
and give the proceeds back to
32:49
people like Esther. We're going
32:51
to keep checking in there and
32:53
keep you updated if anything changes. I
32:56
hope it does, but it's frustrating
32:58
because every time we
33:00
think we're getting closer, we
33:02
seem to hit a dead end. And
33:05
then as we're starting to lose
33:07
hope, the authorities
33:08
suddenly kick
33:10
into gear. First,
33:11
in May twenty twenty two,
33:14
Europul adds doctor
33:15
Ruger to its list of most
33:18
wanted criminals at the request of the German
33:20
police.
33:20
Update eleventh May
33:23
twenty twenty
33:23
two. Ignativa Ruger
33:26
wanted, crime fraud,
33:28
approximate height, a hundred and sixty
33:30
three centimeters,
33:31
eye color, brown, date of birth,
33:33
May thirty, nineteen eighty, nationality,
33:36
German, spoken languages, Hungarian,
33:39
English, German, reward payment, five
33:40
thousand euros. Caution. The
33:42
one to person possible persons accompanying
33:45
her might be armed. And
33:48
a
33:49
few weeks late Peter. There's even
33:52
bigger news. Let's now go out to
33:54
New York here and listen to
33:56
the FBI. In a press
33:58
conference broadcast live
34:00
on Fox News, the FBI's Michael Driscoll
34:03
announced they were adding doctor
34:05
Ruja to their list of
34:07
the top ten most wanted fugitives. We
34:09
ask that anyone who has
34:11
information about Ignatov's whereabouts to
34:13
call us. The FBI gave
34:15
little away about their
34:18
litigation, but this still felt like the
34:20
most significant moment since
34:22
Russia disappeared. We're
34:24
gonna make every effort we can not gonna stop
34:26
looking for. That's what it comes down to.
34:29
Eventually, I'm confident we'll
34:31
find it. It really felt
34:32
quite surreal to be honest. There
34:36
was Rouge's face, a face I'd
34:38
studied for so long, the
34:40
perfect styled hair and the signature
34:42
red lipstick. alongside cartel
34:44
leaders and alleged murderers with
34:46
a one hundred thousand dollar
34:48
reward on offer for information leading
34:51
to her
34:54
arrest.
35:00
And it wasn't long before our
35:02
missing Crypto coin inbox started
35:04
filling up again with new tip
35:06
offs, new
35:08
sightings. This one's really weird.
35:10
A silver Aston Martin was being driven
35:12
around London. It does look a bit lighter,
35:14
right? It's got the hair, the kind of
35:16
lips, Like, it looks like
35:18
it could be her. And then the weird bit about
35:20
it is that the number plate is,
35:23
like, pretty
35:23
significant
35:24
name. It's quite
35:26
similar.
35:26
Some people over in Thailand seem absolutely
35:30
certain that she's hiding in a mansion
35:32
there with another promoter
35:34
like a
35:36
former one coin promoter. We had someone get in
35:38
touch. They
35:40
claim to have seen her
35:44
in grief. and it was in a beach bar near
35:46
thessaloniki, which is a part
35:48
of Greece that Ruja has
35:50
connections to.
35:52
And as we were investigating these new leads,
35:54
a person we'd first written to in
35:56
prison months earlier got back
35:58
to us. And to our surprise,
36:00
surprise agreed to
36:01
talk. So in late August
36:03
twenty twenty two, Rob and
36:05
I took a last minute
36:07
flight to Luxembourg. situations
36:10
change, and then suddenly it's in a person's
36:12
interest to talk. It's And then
36:14
with repeat it. Would you show
36:16
up? I
36:18
spent so long reading about him. I've spent so long talking about
36:20
him. I've spent so long writing about
36:22
him that that
36:24
I've never met him.
36:27
is it? Should we just jump out of here? We mustn't be close
36:29
either way, aren't we?
36:30
Alright. Good luck,
36:33
everybody. Frank Schneider. the former top spy
36:35
who became Rouge's trusted security adviser
36:38
and who is currently fighting
36:40
extradition to
36:42
the US. agreed to
36:44
speak
36:45
to us. Are you
36:47
wearing an ankle bracelet? Yes. I've got
36:49
used to it. It's, you know, that's one
36:51
of those things. Right. It would alert if
36:53
I would leave the premises.
36:56
So that's what it does. So it would
36:58
alert the authorities that I
37:00
would violate
37:02
conditional release conditions, and that would probably
37:04
get me straight back into jail.
37:06
Frank seems to know more
37:10
about Russia. than anyone else we've spoken to on this
37:12
podcast. He's the first person to
37:13
give us an account of what
37:16
happened to
37:18
Russia after she landed in Athens on the twenty fifth of
37:20
October twenty seventeen. She called
37:22
me and she said, hi, everything's fine.
37:25
I'm in Athens. which chatted a bit, nothing
37:27
strange. Other than her bodyguard
37:30
told her that he was told
37:32
he was given instructions to
37:34
leave and travel
37:36
back to Sophia. According to her, he gave her
37:38
a ticket to fly to
37:40
Tesaluniki. The
37:42
security was
37:44
organized by I don't know exactly who, but by someone
37:47
else. And so she
37:50
laughed about this. I
37:52
said, well, I thought you are the
37:54
boss, and and and he just left you.
37:56
And she sort of said, yes, I I always
37:58
thought I am the boss too,
37:59
but he's gone. And so
38:02
what what are you what are you going to do now? She's
38:04
sitting in Athens. She's sitting in
38:06
Athens airport. Yeah. And
38:08
she says, what does a
38:10
girl do when a girl is
38:12
bored? And I said, well, I
38:14
guess you go shopping.
38:16
Yes. I will go shopping now. And
38:18
so off she went, and that was the end of that call.
38:20
A few hours later, she called back
38:22
again, and she was in Tesaluniki.
38:26
She said, nobody was
38:28
waiting for her. However,
38:30
she got a text saying that some
38:32
people will arrive. They are delayed and
38:34
they'll come I have my dinner and then around eleven o'clock,
38:36
eleven, eleven thirty, twelve, I don't
38:38
know midnight. She called
38:40
and she was in
38:42
a car. She said that she was on the
38:44
way back to Bulgaria. I only
38:46
got one text, which was around two
38:48
o'clock in
38:50
the morning, in English that
38:52
said home safe. Now one
38:54
has to understand, I only
38:56
spoke German
38:58
to her and we
39:00
text it in German. So
39:02
I found his home
39:04
safe immediately, slightly bizarre, but she
39:06
would say, this in in English home
39:09
safe. And that was the
39:11
last I ever received from any
39:13
of her devices from the next day
39:15
on, the phones were off. that never
39:17
happened.
39:17
I believe that she's not
39:20
missing that that whatever's
39:22
happened to her, I feel that
39:25
that it's not under her
39:28
control. Next
39:33
time the
39:34
missing Crypto queen, more
39:36
on her disappearance. And that's
39:38
not the only thing Frank tells us.
39:41
She certainly didn't need me
39:43
to carry out the dirty
39:45
work that she wanted carrying
39:47
out. Within Bulgaria, there
39:50
were certainly very powerful and very different resources to get
39:52
hold of this kind of information. The
39:54
kind of information Frank
39:56
hands us on a memory
39:58
stick. I do have the documents and I have
39:59
them here and I give them to you. And I think you need
40:02
to stop looking at the very, very,
40:04
very top of that country. A memory stick
40:06
not
40:06
only with documents, but recordings
40:08
he says were made by doctor
40:10
Ruja. They run from
40:13
fourth of October. over through to the twenty fourth
40:15
day before she disappears. They're
40:18
both recording the calls. What's the
40:20
drama? You can,
40:22
like, just stuffy, though. Can't you? Do you think any of it gives
40:24
us any clues? Does
40:26
any of it tell us anything? Yeah.
40:28
There's a few things. I
40:32
really worry about you. Like, is there
40:34
anything that you
40:35
can tell me or whatever? I don't
40:37
know. Are you okay?
40:48
Remember, if you have information
40:49
about doctor Ruja you'd like to share
40:51
with us, you can
40:54
reach us at crypto
40:56
queen at BBC dot co dot
40:58
u k. Or you could
41:00
go to the FBI. Thank
41:02
you to those who've already been in touch
41:04
with us, and we'll be checking our
41:07
email daily. The
41:10
missing crypto queen was presented by
41:12
me, Jamie Bartlett, It was
41:14
written by me and Rob
41:16
Byrne. The producers were Georgia Cat
41:18
and Rob Byrne. The series
41:20
producer is
41:22
Georgia Cat. The music, which is very nice to hear
41:24
again, is by Phil Channel and
41:26
Desi Salva, Stefanover, and the
41:28
London Bulgarian
41:30
choir. The
41:31
commissioner is Dylan Hoskins. series editor is
41:33
Philip
41:33
Sellars. This is a BBC
41:35
documentary production for
41:38
BBC sounds and BBC
41:40
five
41:42
live. How
41:56
many people who have been on the FBI's
41:58
most wanted
41:59
this, have ever sat down for a
42:02
podcast with the BBC.
42:04
I think
42:04
about, like, how many people have
42:07
been murdered how many people have been
42:09
brutally tortured. And how did I
42:11
get on the most wanted people in
42:13
the entire country of
42:16
the United its states. For over a
42:18
decade, a pair
42:18
of mug shots have
42:20
lived side by side on FBI's
42:24
website
42:24
on its list of America's
42:26
most wanted domestic terrorists. The
42:28
FBI is offering a reward of
42:30
up to fifty thousand dollars for
42:32
information leading to the rest of each of these individuals. The US government says they
42:35
were
42:35
a part of a movement whose
42:37
reign of intimidation and fear
42:39
was so great. that
42:41
in two thousand five, they were called the number
42:44
one domestic terror threat in
42:46
America. In a way
42:48
you look
42:48
at it, these individuals are
42:50
considered as terrorists. Their names Joseph
42:53
Mahmoud Abe and Josephine To
42:56
the Sunshine
42:58
Show break. because of
43:00
their alleged terrorist actions,
43:02
the environment. And now,
43:04
one of them has
43:05
been caught. Do you
43:08
think we could talk to him? I mean,
43:10
him. Absolutely. this by him?
43:11
Absolutely. Yeah. For the
43:12
moment, they started, like, we're gonna
43:14
put you prison for thirty five years while
43:16
that was pretty serious and it
43:19
hasn't really relented any.
43:22
I'm
43:22
Leah Sottile. And for the past
43:24
eighteen months, as Joe Debei's case
43:26
goes through the court, I've been trying
43:28
to
43:28
understand who the two fugitive ego
43:31
terrorists really are. beyond those mug
43:33
shots. 0II think they would
43:35
be heroes. And what the
43:37
truth is about
43:38
a group known as the Earth liberation.
43:42
front. A myth.
43:45
No way. Answer
43:47
it will take us
43:50
into radical
43:52
active his communities
43:53
passed and present on both sides of the Atlantic. How
43:55
do you deal with these massive,
43:57
like, environmental problems? You
43:59
I
43:59
thought it was necessary. You know, it was
44:02
necessary to take such drastic
44:03
action. In my work on
44:06
extremism,
44:06
I've covered a lot of stories
44:09
about the are right, why people resort
44:11
to violence, commit actions that
44:13
leave people dead, and how
44:15
society responds to
44:17
that. In this story, it doesn't quite fit
44:19
that mold. The
44:21
terrorist label being
44:26
applied to activists who very explicitly
44:28
take kind of extreme measures to
44:30
ensure that no one is
44:32
injured.
44:32
I
44:33
think it reveals
44:35
the priorities of our government.
44:37
To the authorities, those
44:39
two fugitives and the group they
44:41
were a
44:41
part of are
44:44
violent extremists. I think
44:46
it would have continued
44:48
escalate. To their supporters, their
44:50
warriors. Law of us were hearing
44:52
about what was happened. lot
44:54
of
44:54
us were excited about. People
44:56
will take away very different things
44:58
on what they hear. You could
45:00
have been blown apart, you know. I mean, for people would. But
45:02
where you sit on what
45:04
they did isn't a question of
45:06
what happened in the past.
45:08
No matter how long this takes, we're gonna stop the Dakota Axis
45:11
pipeline. Huge plumes of smoke
45:13
rose above London as
45:15
grass fires engulfed homes. Last year, the
45:18
temperature has got to a hundred and
45:20
fifteen degrees. A bunch of farm workers
45:22
here die. So this is the thing why
45:23
they didn't die. they were
45:26
killed. There's a real
45:28
biting sense at the minute that things
45:30
are
45:30
reaching ahead reaching ahead.
45:33
at
45:33
the heart of this story is a question
45:35
being asked again
45:36
right now. Maybe there are
45:38
more people who really want to do what
45:41
is necessary to make change. I don't know
45:43
what that is either. How
45:44
far is too far to go to
45:46
stop the planet burning? If it's
45:49
not me, then it's who. You know? And if it's not me,
45:51
then it's when. He
45:52
he tried to destroy
45:53
our lives, that's what they accomplished
45:55
in my view.
45:58
Bernwild
45:58
starting September
45:59
sixth on BBC
46:01
sounds or wherever you
46:03
get your podcasts.
46:04
yeah
46:08
For over
46:10
a decade,
46:14
a
46:14
pair of
46:18
mug shots have lived side by side on the FBI's
46:20
website. These
46:20
individuals are considered as terrorists.
46:23
The cause of their
46:24
alleged terrorists actions, the environment.
46:27
Estimates
46:27
are a quarter billion dollars
46:29
in damages. How far is too far
46:31
to go to stop the planet burning?
46:33
If it's not me,
46:36
then to move this lot
46:38
now. Burn Wild. Find
46:40
us wherever you get
46:42
your podcasts.
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