cryptovest.com
CoinFlux, the popular cryptocurrency exchange from Romania, has had its bank accounts frozen days after its CEO, Vlad Nistor, was arrested by local law enforcement officials. In a blog post on Medium, the company also claimed it is unable to communicate with clients through its website or email.
“Due to a recently started, unexpected investigation, we are in the unpleasant situation of temporarily stopping any digital currency exchanges,” said the company in their release. “Unfortunately, our company’s bank accounts have been frozen, a situation which affects the CoinFlux wallets as well. We are doing all possible efforts, along with our legal advisers, to make sure everyone who had money deposited in CoinFlux wallets gets it back.”
The founder and CEO of the company, Vlad Nistor, was detained in the city of Cluj on Tuesday on behalf of the US government and presumably extradited the same day. The 29-year-old founder of CoinFlux will reportedly be charged with two criminal cases, allegations of fraud, computer fraud, organized crime, and money laundering. According to Romanian sources, Nistor is the son of one of the founders of Banca Transilvania, the second-largest financial institution in the eastern European country.
Following the unfortunate development for the company, clients of CoinFlux were left expecting an official statement for almost 24 hours. On Wednesday, CoinFlux finally released a short statement on Twitter, informing customers that it had been forced to ‘temporarily stop any digital currency exchanges.’
CoinFlux is an online currency trading platform that works on a currency exchange model. For trading, customers need a bank account and an electronic wallet in which to store their coins. In the case of bitcoin purchases, for example, customers convert CoinFlux from their own bank account a sum of money and receive, instead, the equivalent in bitcoin, directly into the electronic wallet. When selling digital coins, the process is reversed. Coinflux boasts advantages such as price, trading speed, customer service and the intuitive structure of the platform.
CoinFlux was founded in 2015 by Nistor, who was previously the Portfolio Manager of Retirement Funds pillar II and BCR Pensions, where he managed assets over 500 million euros. The company offers services to European crypto traders, with a focus on Romanian investors. The platform offers trades in Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Ripple (XRP), and Ethereum Classic (ETC), among others. Shortly before their CEO was detained, CoinFlux was advertising promotional low prices to celebrate their third year anniversary.
Despite the bad news, CoinFlux hopes it will return to normalcy as soon as possible. “Our expectation is that we will gain control back, within the next days,” said the company in a blog post. “We are aware that this is a worrisome situation for the people who have placed their trust in our service, and we assure each and every one of them that we will do everything that’s up to us to fix this unfair situation.”