Celsius Claims Executives Withdrew Millions Of Dollars Before Bankruptcy
According to documents filed in a New York bankruptcy court late Wednesday by the crypto lender’s lawyers, the company’s top executives took out at least $30 million in cryptocurrencies in the month before the platform stopped letting customers take money out.
According to these filings, in May, now-former CEO Alex Mashinsky, co-founder Daniel Leon, and CTO Nuke Goldstein, as well as entities named in the documents as their related parties, made a series of withdrawals that added up to more than $30 million. Transactions were made with Bitcoin, Ether, USDC, Celsius’s own CEL token, and Bitcoin that had been “wrapped.”
The filing shows that Mashinsky took out about $10 million in cryptocurrency over the course of the month of May. The documents show that Leon took out about $7 million, but after he put money back in, he only took out about $3.1 million. In the calculations, withdrawals made by entities and people connected to the executives have been taken into account.
Goldstein took about $13 million out of the bank. Lawyers for Goldstein told Bloomberg that the CTO and related parties were responsible for about $559,000 in withdrawals, after deposits were taken out.
An email asking for a comment from a representative of Celsius wasn’t answered right away. Mashinsky and Leon did not answer any of the many requests for comments.
The report, which was put together by Celsius advisers, says that some transactions that are marked as “withdrawals” may actually be transfers from one type of Celsius account to another. The report says that the company’s advisors are still looking into whether any transfers or withdrawals from the platform could be grounds for a lawsuit.
Once one of the most important lenders in the industry, Celsius stopped letting customers withdraw money in June and filed for bankruptcy the following month. This was because the company had made risky bets before the crypto market as a whole went downhill. The bankruptcy judge in charge of the case recently chose an examiner to look into claims of wrongdoing by the company and its leaders.
Mashinsky quit as CEO last month, and Leon’s departure from the company was confirmed by Celsius on Tuesday.
