Bulgaria ends investigation into Nexo

Bulgaria announced that it ended its investigation into Nexo on the grounds that it found no evidence of crime.

The crypto company was first probed by Bulgarian officials in January of this year. Law enforcement raided the company’s offices in an attempt to uncover alleged financial crimes, from tax evasion to fraud.

At the time, a Nexo spokesperson told Blockworks that the officials were “inquiring about a Bulgarian entity of the group that is not customer-facing but only has operational expense-related functions — payroll, customer support, back office.”

“There is no evidence of criminal activity in various forms of complicity in order to carry out banking activity by occupation without a corresponding permit. Also, no evidence of money laundering was collected,” the prosecutor’s office of Bulgaria said in a statement on Dec. 22.

The prosecutor’s office also noted — according to a translated version of the announcement — that Bulgaria “lacks a corresponding legal regime for the activity related to services with crypto assets,” and “the Nexo group companies are not subject to permit, registration or licensing regimes.”

“The dropping of all charges made against Nexo and its executives by the Bulgarian prosecutor’s office, with their confirmation that there were no crimes, unequivocally shows that the whole attack on Nexo was political and should not have happened in the first place,” Nexo’s managing partner Antoni Trenchev said in an emailed statement to Blockworks.

Trenchev added that Nexo was “very content with this result.”

The company phased out its US operations starting in December 2022 after it sought clarity on crypto regulation in the US.

The company claimed that it engaged in “more than 18 months of good-faith dialogue with US state and federal regulators” but it was unable to ensure that “regulators are focused on [the customer’s] best interests.”

In January, Nexo and the US Securities and Exchange Commission reached a $45 million settlement agreement and the company agreed to stop offering its earn interest product, which promised annual interest of up to 20% to investors.

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