GERMANY Case Analyzed

[Igorkrnic]

In this topic, I will address and analyze what happened in Germany and is it really that bad and is Onecoin really permanently banned in Germany as negative media and people advertise (they would for sure want it to be so).

All we need to do is analyze all articles issued by the German financial regulatory body, BaFin.

The first article they published was at April 10. 2017. The title says it all:

IMS International Marketing Services GmbH: account freezing and winding-down of unauthorized money remittance business

As we know global MLM companies do not register branches all over the world. Instead, leaders register a company on their own and collect money from MLM company's products from that country and in agreed intervals transfers it to the main company's account.
So IMS international seems to be owned by one of Onelife leaders. I came to know it was Frank Rickets and his company was used as Service Provider, who supported OneLife in Payment Facilitation and Marketing Services and IMS was supposed to obtain a license for "money remittance" services as IMS business was categorized as such by Bafin. So IMS was blocked and it was supposed to obtain a license for that. I have no idea what he will do but I know that Onelife/Onecoin do not use his company anymore.
Haters will say that IMS was a shell company of Onecoin but that is their ignorance on how MLM works.

So the fact is, Bafin recognized as IMS was doing money transmittance services for Onecoin ltd Dubai and they did not have a license for that so they were blocked.

Onelife company issued an official statement that this article was not their fault cause IMS was supposed to obtain that license, not Onelife/Onecoin:


After this official statement, a new order was issued on April 18, 2017, but this time against the IMS client - Onecoin LTD Dubai.
I will just quote a title cause the rest of article is not so important, the title sums it all:

Onecoin Ltd, Dubai: Prohibition of involvement in unauthorized money remittance business

So, following IMS prohibition, also Onecoin was prohibited in dealing with money remittance business until they obtain a license.
Except, Onecoin was never involved in money remittance in Germany so this order is probably just in case they do, this is just a warning: "if you want to do it, obtain a license". My opinion of course.

After the money transmittance business has been taken care of by BaFin, they seemed to investigate what Onelife/Onecoin do and they kinda recognised Onecoin as a crypto currency and we all know what are cryptocurrencies involved in so, despite Onecoin being still private, BaFin seem to know the plan to releasing it to public, they made another prohibition of promoting Onecoin until a financial license is obtained from the BaFin.
It is this order from April 27, 2017. Title says:

Onecoin Ltd (Dubai), OneLife Network Ltd (Belize) und One Network Services Ltd (Sofia/Bulgaria): BaFin issues cease and desist orders holding the companies to stop own funds trading in “OneCoins” in Germany

So Onelife was ordered to stop fund trading in Onecoins. This is so unclear since Onelife sells Education, not Onecoins but as transparent and compliant Onelife company is, they issued an official statement on April 28, 2017, that until they clear this with Bafin, promotional tokens will not be granted in Germany as a precaution. If anyone says this compliant company is a scam then God help you.


Here is the key paragraph that explains why Onelife/Onecoin got cease and desist:

Today’s cease and desist orders are based on the conclusion that the way Onecoin Ltd, Dubai, and OneLife Network Ltd, Belize have “OneCoins” traded as virtual currency in Germany comes down to Eigenhandel (own funds trading) of financial instruments in the meaning of § 1 (1a) sentence 2 no. 4 of the German Federal Banking Act (“KWG”). Eigenhandel as financial service would have required prior authorization by BaFin according to § 32 (1) KWG.

They simply recognise Onecoin as financial service and demand the company to obtain a license from Bafin. This is not ban as haters spin it to be.

So on recent "Ask dr Ruja" webinar, this issue was being addressed.
I made a transcript:

More information about the situation in Germany and Italy is what people have been asking frequently. What are future predictions for the current members and for the people who want to join from these countries?

dr Ruja:
We as a company are aware and we are speaking with all regulatory bodies in Europe. Europe is a very important market for us so what we have done, we are filing for a financial license in Germany as this is an important market for us and as I said Onecoin is interested in being on the market for long long time.
So it takes time, the filling process is pretty complicated as you can imagine, also the documents acquired are quite extensive but we are providing them and when ever we hear back from the authorities from the licensing process we will let you know.
This is what is extremely important to us and we are really focus into education of the market and some of the leaders oversell, are too aggressive and again, we as a company do not tolerate people who are over selling or selling this opportunity on the wrong way.

So in situation in Germany and Italy again summarizing, we are on this, we are monitoring this very carefully, but I also would like leaders to be very responsible, and as I said, compliance is punishing people who act as they shouldn't and also you guys in the network, please take care of your people because they just damage them selves, you, all your members.

UK Is the best example how payments should be done. We know that in the UK, IMAs use SuperCapital financial services platform that has all required licenses, unlike IMS in Germany. This is how smart IMAs work, not like others who open their own money transmittance company without a license.

[Ökonom]

Hi Igor, I repeat ; You`re doing a great Job in this Forum.

Zu Deutschland : Leider nicht viel Neues, habe ich aber auch nicht erwartet. Die BAFin wird letztlich nicht umhin kommen, die Erlaubnis zum Eigenhandel nach KWG zu erteilen. Aber sie werden versuchen, das so lang wie möglich hinzuziehen. Einmal natürlich, weil die Erlaubnis zum Eigenhandel einem Ritterschlag für OneCoin gleichkommen würde, zum anderen aber will man vielleicht versuchen, die Sache bis zu einer EU-Regulierung offen zu halten.

Im übrigen wäre es interessant, mal zu überprüfen, wieviele BitCoin- und AltCoin ICOs und MiningPools ebenfalls als Eigenhandel betreibend im Sinne der BAFin Rechtsauffassung qualifiziert werden müssten.

OneCoin-freundliche Presseanfragen ans BaFin werden z.Zt. geblockt mit dem Hinweis auf eine bestehende Verschwiegenheitspflicht. Diese hatte die BAFin aber nicht daran gehindert, selbst detailliert über die Maßnahmen gegen IMS und OneCoin zu berichten, bevor man den Bescheid OneCoin selbst zugestellt hatte.

»Honi soit qui mal y pense« Ein Narr, der Böses dabei denkt.

---ENG

To Germany: Unfortunately, not much new, but I did not expect. Finally, BAFin will not be able to grant permission to own-trade under KWG. But they will try to get it as long as possible. Once, of course, because the permission to own a trade would be equivalent to OneCoin, but on the other hand you may want to try to keep the matter open until EU regulation.

Furthermore, it would be interesting to check how many BitCoin and AltCoin ICOs and MiningPools also had to qualify as proprietary trading in the sense of the BAFin Rechtsauffassung.

OneCoin-friendly press inquiries to BaFin are currently being Blocked with a reference to an existing secrecy obligation. This, however, had not prevented the BAFin from reporting on the measures against IMS and OneCoin itself, even before submitting the decision OneCoin itself.

"Honi soit qui mal y pense" A fool who thinks evil.

[Igorkrnic]

Thank you for your info
I added English Google translate to your post, it is not so good but better than nothing for the people that do not understand German

[Igorkrnic]

Since we explained what is going on with BaFin in Germany. We know Bafin did not declare Onecoin cryptocurrency illegal or scam as critiques would like to state. They simply issued that Onecoin does not have a trading financial license in Germany.

It would be interesting to ask them how come Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are not mentioned in the same manner but maybe it is because those are anarchy and there is no entity to refer to.

I will write in this post about coinspondent.de, one more of the Bitcoin bloggers who disagree with Onecoin model and he thinks his role is to "warn" people to stay away from it.

My name is Friedemann Brenneis and I am working as a freelance journalist for German radio , Die Zeit , various ARD institutions as well as various specialist magazines for technology, business, and digital change.
I started the Coinspondent at the beginning of 2014 in order to be able to deal with the topic bitcoin / blockchain up-to-date, critically, in a subtle and understandable way.

He made several articles where he just randomly warns people to stay away from Onecoin, but he was the one that initially reported the first Bafin article about IMS International stating that it was a ban for Onecoin where Onecoin was never mentioned. (we saw it came later and it is clear what that means)

We can actually read about it summed all here at behindMLM article. Of course it is twisted and anti-Onecoin packed as usual.

Coinspondent.de owner claims that Onecoin used their lawyer firm in Germany to send a warning to remove such articles and pay 1440EUR fee. There are no proofs for that cause original linkt to it from behindMLM old articles were removed so I can not analyze them.
Right now we can only believe the word of Bitcoin blogger. And I don't like that

Coinspondent.de owner allegedly did not remove the article, although I tried to search "bafin", "IMS", and "onecoin" on his blog and I could not find any article announcing BaFin statements about IMS or Onecoin. They were just mentioned in certain articles called "Bitcoin vs Onecoin"

So he claims he did not remove articles and he did not pay 1440 EUR. Also, he claims that because he failed to do it, Onecoin lawyers failed for Injunction for his blog website. He claims that Injunction was denied and now Onecoin is appealing that decision. No proof for that neither, only his words.

But he also claims in this Bitcoin vs Onecoin :Action is filed article that he gathered 5 figure money donation from bitcoin community and he paid his lawyer to file a suit to Onecoin LTD.

He claims that after him failing to pay 1440EUR, Onecoin lawyers filed Injunction for his blog web site and it was denied by the district court of Cologne. They appeal this to the higher body but he is confident they will deny it too.

Now he claims he decided to sue Onecoin LTD because of those warnings that were "unauthorized" as he says

He claims he chose Landgericht Berlin to file a suit against Onecoin.

CONCLUCION:
Seems like Germany has many web sites that are pretty big in slandering Onecoin for some reason. We all know Gerlacht report that already wrote how Onelife Macau event was banned and we know it was held, also they wrote how Netherlands ministry declared Onecoin a scam and we can see here what they actually responded. We need to note that ALL articles are stripped from any source info. All the articles are just some author's story writing.
The same can be said for coinspondent.de. He has no sourced links for any of his claims.
Alleged warnings from Onecoin do not exist, we can not see them, we can not see alleged Injunction denial, we can not even see his own law suit.

Not saying he is necessarily lying, but we must wonder, why do these Germans tend to only write what's on their mind and not put some proof for it.

Now, even if all that is true, I don't see how important that is to the Onecoin company. They did announce to go after Bitcoin bloggers that randomly slander Onecoin and write their opinions as accusations. This guy is just one of them. Sure some Injuction appeals will be denied. But if Onecoins Injucion appeal was removed, assuming one actually existed, maybe it was removed cause mos articles were deleted? My two cents

[Harry]

By the way: Frank Ricketts, the new "Captain", is a very close business partner of IMS International Marketing Services GmbH in Greven/Germany. Frank Ricketts even uses the same address as the IMS! Here the excerpt from the German commercial register:

https://share-your-photo.com/85f0f5e73b

And this is the domain registration of www.onesitetalk.eu, even with a German phone number:

https://share-your-photo.com/afb9a041e6

Although Igor writes a lot, but only half the truth - or even less!

[Igorkrnic]

Although Igor writes a lot, but only half the truth - or even less!

Did you even read what I wrote here? You are trolling too much here.

Here is a quote from first post this topic:

I came to know it was Frank Rickets and his company was used as Service Provider, who supported OneLife in Payment Facilitation and Marketing Services and IMS was supposed to obtain a license for "money remittance" services as IMS business was categorized as such by Bafin.