Estonian financial inspection is starting the process of controlling and regulating Estonian crowd lending platforms. Stability and transparency will benefit the development of whole industry and remove fraudulent players.
The Police and Border Guard Board received dozens of applications regarding the recently terminated Estonian crowd investing platforms Kuetzal and Envestio. Platforms are being down for 3 days. 2 days ago Evestimo have posted following update on their Facebook page:
Dear Investors,
We would like to address all our clients, investors, borrowers and other counterparties with the following very important issue. We proudly declare that till present moment Envestio managed to fulfill on time and in good faith all financial obligations to all contractual investors and borrowers, despite the very unfavorable situation in the crowdfunding market, provoked by the uncertainty and potential fail of Kuetzal platform.Simultaneously with the recent concerns within the industry, we tracked repeatedly various technical attempts targeted to influence dramatically on stability of Envestio platform. They were performed through hacker attacks on our web site and platform’s internal structure and database.
At the same time, we noticed that destructive public relations campaign against Envestio has been initiated and which consisted of spreading knowingly false and unconfirmed information by numerous internet resources questioning financial stability and reliability of our platform, denigrating the reputation of the Envestio owners and key employees.
We tend to consider these attempts as a consistent and well-planned set of actions aimed to cause significant financial and reputational damage, as a result of which the Envestio platform should inevitably begin to experience substantial difficulties with current payments to its investors.
We assume that the ultimate goal of all these actions is to devalue overall Envestio’s business, and the subsequent potential raider takeover of the company or an attempt to eliminate the company from the industry, getting rid of as strong competitor. The implementation of the aforementioned scenario is evidenced by a number of factors and hostile actions that occurred precisely at the moment when a serious crisis of confidence reigned in the crowdfunding market and which actually was caused by the scandal surrounding the activities of the Kuetzal platform.
Envestio strongly condemns any actions aimed at further destabilizing the current crowdfunding market situation and disrupting the activity of the Envestio platform, as these factors together can lead to an uncontrolled solvency crisis, influencing not only Envestio but also other industry participants.
Situation with Envestio is getting more interesting after Liene Meldere (Envestio Investment and Development Advisor) post on Facebook:
Envestio’s website is down. Whether it is because of investors panic, hacking, or maybe Envestio is a scam… I’m receiving questions from investors about what has happened through every possible channels. But unfortunately, I have no answers because our COO Jevgenijs Kukins is out of reach for me too and has been deleted from all social networks. Moreover, I haven’t received any sufficient explanation from our current shareholder Arkadi Ganzin. I am not a decision maker or a board member with signatory rights at Envestio – I do not have access to bank accounts and the investors’ database. I worked as freelancer in Envestio, To the best of my knowledge, Alesia Nikalaichyk and other employees in IT, Sales and Support were just following the management’s tasks in daily activities not related to due-diligence of funded projects and did not have authority to execute payments. As a result, I have no answers and I very much hope that either the COO or the Shareholder will soon contact me and investors to terminate our concerns and uncertainties.
On January 12, investors received a letter stating that Kuetzal was shutting down. The first signs were observed back in December, when information appeared that the platform was attracting projects from non-leading enterprises, and people rushed to collect their money.
Maxim Reutov CEO of Kuetezalm also claimed to investors that the company was under investigation in Latvia due to money laundering and EUR 2.4 million was frozen in the bank account of the company.
The Envestio homepage is not available from this Tuesday. On the same day, a message appeared on the enterprise’s Facebook page that their homepage allegedly came under hacker attack. In the message, the company also accused competitors of defamation, but admitted that there were difficulties with paying money to investors. After that, Envestio did not provide investors with any official information.
If you are also a victim of any of these investment platforms, then Estonians can apply on the police home page. A statement can also be sent to ppa@politsei.ee, describing circumstances as accurately as possible, as well as indicating your contact details, amount of damage, dates of transactions, etc.