Albanian authorities have arrested Faruk Fatih Ozer – CEO of Turkish cryptocurrency exchange Thodex – in the city of Elbasan after over a year of hunting him down. Last year, the platform halted all trading and withdrawals, while the 28-year-old exec reportedly left Turkey with over $2 billion in users’ assets. Despite not managing to detect Ozer’s whereabouts at first, Turkish law enforcement agents jailed six others connected to the fraud. Two of them were the brother and the sister of the CEO.
Faruk Ozer and his ailing crypto exchange Thodex made headlines in 2021. The halt of all services and subsequent closure of the website resulted in significant losses for many Turkish investors. The case prompted local authorities to investigate the company and detain everybody responsible for its collapse. Over the course of investigations, they arrested 62 people related to the scam and sent six of them to prison. Two of the criminals were Faruk Ozer’s brother and sister.
However, Faruk managed to escape the long arm of the law momentarily. It was rumoured that he left his homeland with $2 billion of users funds. Ozer was eventually arrested in the Albanian city of Elbasan on 30th August 2022. Prosecutor Kreshnik Ajazi informed that he will be held in custody until he faces a court hearing in the coming days. Shortly after, the Albania and the Turkey will cooperate on his extradition.
It remains unknown what punishment Ozer will face. However, it could be severe because he obtained an Interpol red notice for his year-long elusion of the authorities while his fraudulent scheme ranks highly among the largest-ever financial scams in Turkey’s long history.
The record inflation, the depreciating Turkish lira and political tension, among other problems, has prompted users to reroute some of their savings into cryptocurrencies. The assets that have been most heavily adopted in the country are Bitcoin (BTC) and the stablecoin Tether (USDT).
On its part, the government contemplated introducing additional control over the local digital asset market. They specifically insisted that exchanges should have a minimum of 100 million liras ($6.1 million) in capital before they can operate on Turkish soil. The authorities also support taxing cryptocurrency transactions. Currently, they have not announced when this step will be enforced and what the tax rate will be.
Featured Image Search: www.apnacryptonews.com
