A Twitter account has accused the Bulgarian co-founders of the Swiss-based cryptocurrency lender Nexo of misappropriating funds from a charity platform. The company has rejected the allegations in the anonymous attack, which comes after Nexo offered a buyout deal to troubled rival Celsius.
Anonymous Allegations Against Co-Founders Circulated on Social Media
A Twitter user going by the handle @otteroooo has drawn attention to media reports about misuse of donations to a charity allegedly linked to the people behind Nexo, a major provider of crypto-backed loans. In a thread published on Sunday, the unidentified author accuses Nexo co-founder Kosta Kantchev and his family of siphoning money from the Helpkarma foundation which raises funds for various goodwill causes. Another two co-founders — former Member of Parliament and managing partner at Nexo Antoni Trenchev and Georgi Shulev — have been mentioned as well.
Otteroooo cites reports by two Bulgarian websites — Bird.bg, or Bureau for Investigative Reporting and Data, and Lupa.bg, another supposedly investigative outlet. In the spring of 2018, the first found that Kalin Kantchev, Kosta’s father, had been installed on the management board of Helpkarma while the second established that as Helpkarma’s donations piled in, the instant loan provider Credissimo, featured in Nexo’s whitepaper as the platform that powers the crypto project, started to report capital increases.
One of the allegations is that donated money had been used to purchase real estate and finance personal travels. Another is that the charity handed out huge salaries and commissions to its management and staff, the total of which exceeded a 5-percent cap on such expenses, while also writing large invoices to related companies. Helpkarma withholds a portion of the received donations to finance its operations. Kosta Kantchev has been presented as the beneficial owner of
