Missing Cryptoqueen Ruja Ignatova’s links to Bulgaria underworld

When we interviewed Mr Schneider at his home in France, he was under house arrest, awaiting extradition to the US in connection to the OneCoin scam. He was not, however, prepared to reveal names.

“I’m not going to tell you who, because I have a family… This is real serious organised crime.”

But in the end, Ms Ignatova’s protector may have turned aggressor.

In 2022, Bulgarian investigative journalist Dimitar Stoyanov and his colleagues at the investigative news outlet bird.bg were handed a police report that had been found at the home of a murdered Bulgarian police officer.

In the document, a police informant details overhearing Taki’s brother-in-law drunkenly saying Ms Ignatova had been murdered on Taki’s orders in late 2018, and her body dismembered and dumped off a yacht in the Ionian Sea. Mr Stoyanov says this account is “very, very possible”.

The authenticity of the police document was confirmed by Bulgarian officials, and multiple criminal associates of Taki believe the theory he had her murdered to be true, Mr Stoyanov says.

However, the BBC has been unable to independently verify the claim.

The associates’ rationale being that the wanted Ms Ignatova became a liability to Taki, who wished to eliminate his links to the OneCoin fraud.

Those associates include Krasimir Kamenov, known as Kuro, wanted by Interpol on murder charges.

Mr Stoyanov says Kuro told him he had heard Taki discussing his criminal business in front of Ms Ignatova, and when Kuro had challenged Taki on whether he should be doing that, Taki had answered: “Don’t worry, she’s as good as dead.”

Kuro had also claimed to have talked to the CIA about Taki, including about the allegation that Taki had ordered Ms Ignatova’s murder. Sources close to Kuro confirmed to the BBC that this meeting took place in late 2022.

In May 2023, Kuro was assassinated in his Cape Town home, along with his wife and two others who worked for him. South African police are still searching for the killers, but Bulgarian former deputy minister Hristanov believes Kuro’s murder is linked to Taki.

“Certain people had to be removed because they knew too much about Taki.

“It was kind of a public execution that looked more like a statement. Be careful who you deal with,” he told us.

Since publishing allegations of Ms Ignatova’s murder, journalist Dimitar Stoyanov says he and his colleagues have faced death threats, forcing him to temporarily leave Bulgaria for the fourth time in his career.

Mr Stoyanov doesn’t claim to know a motive for any alleged murder, but property records show, and eyewitnesses have told him, that since her disappearance, a number of her Bulgarian properties are now being used by people connected to Taki.