
In doing so, Putin has endangered global economic growth. On the conflict in Eastern Europe, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ultimate objective is to take back the territories that once belonged to the Soviet Union, Mashinsky said. We have very strong support at that $30,000 level,” Mashinsky told David Lin, anchor for Kitco News. “I think for this conflict this is the bottom. Celsius said it “will continue to act in the best interest of our community, our customers, and our investors.Bitcoin has just hit a critical support level and has likely seen the bottom for the duration of the conflict in Eastern Europe, said Alex Mashinsky, CEO of Celsius Network. Last week Rod Bolger, the former chief financial officer of Canadian bank RBC, was appointed by Celsius as Shalem’s replacement. The investment followed a crackdown in September on digital asset lenders by US state regulators, who said that Celsius was engaged in unregistered securities offerings. It’s the work that you would expect us to do with outside advisers, lawyers etc,” he said.Īlexandre Synnett, chief technology officer for CDPQ, said: “We are very careful . . . our due diligence process is very serious.” “We’ve spent now almost nine months with Alex and his team, and it’s quite collaborative. Tosi at the time told the FT that he had done thorough due diligence on Celsius before deciding to invest. The $400mn equity investment round in October was led by asset manager WestCap, headed by former Airbnb and Blackstone chief financial officer Laurence Tosi, and Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ), Canada’s second-largest pension fund. In the same period the price of Bitcoin fell by a third. The assets held by Celsius have dropped from $26bn to $19bn since November. Our client is certain that at the end of the investigation, it will be found that he had committed no wrongdoing.”Ĭelsius has grown rapidly since its launch in 2017 by offering investors investment returns as high as 17 per cent on cryptocurrency transferred to its platform, which it lends to individuals and institutions. They said Shalem left Hogeg’s venture capital firm at the beginning of 2018 and that the suspect ventures “were active after he no longer held a position with the group, and without him having any involvement in them. Lawyers for Shalem said he “acted in accordance with the law and strongly and utterly rejects any attempt to associate him with any act of fraud.” Hogeg’s lawyers have been quoted as saying he “vehemently denies the allegations against him and is co-operating fully with his investigators”. Hearings to have the gag orders lifted were delayed multiple times, as lawyers tested positive for coronavirus and judges struggled to find scheduling slots for all the defendants’ legal representation as Israeli courts worked through a backlog of cases from the pandemic.Ī senior police officer dragged thousands of confidential documents back and forth for hearings that were regularly cancelled or rescheduled. Before the court order was lifted, Shalem’s arrest was reported by Coindesk, despite the order. The identities of the others were subject to a gagging order which was lifted on Tuesday following a joint request from the Financial Times and the Times of Israel. Initially only the owner of Beitar Jerusalem, Moshe Hogeg, had been identified in press reporting as one of those arrested.

The statement did not specify the ventures to which the allegations related. Israeli police said on November 18 that suspects had been arrested on “suspicion of committing fraudulent offences in the field of cryptocurrencies, amounting to hundreds of millions of shekels”, or at least tens of millions of US dollars. None of the suspects have been charged with any offence. He was one of 10 arrested, including the owner of Israel’s most famous football team, Beitar Jerusalem. Shalem joined Celsius in March 2021, according to his LinkedIn profile, and is well known in the Israeli tech start-up scene as an executive and investor.
