Arbidex was formed by a Russian team in 2017. The startup promised to offer “risk-free” crypto arbitrage and raised more than 10 million USD in an ICO.
After Arbidex started onboarding clients, it became known to Arbidex staff and the beneficiary, that the service was not delivering what was advertised and reported to users and to make matters worse, the CTO of the company, Denis Kobyakov, allegedly stole 210 BTC.
Instead of informing the clients and closing the project the team decided to move on.
For the following years until early 2021, they continued to aggressively market the service, offering even more advantageous terms“ to collect investor money in order to pay out “old” investors – a typical pyramid scheme.
This was mainly triggered by the fact that many of the “old” investors were business partners of the owner of the project. In short: they collected new money in order to repay the friends.
When the liquidity issues could not be hidden anymore and Kamilia Arslanova left her position, the beneficiary, Elbek Safaev, put Andrei Bratyakin in charge.
Andrei Bratyakin spent 4 years in jail for fraud previously and was now in charge of what was left of the clients’ money. During his months carrying forward the Arbidex project as appointed by the beneficiary, Andrey explored and reported on new possible creative ways to keep the pyramid going, including a DEFI initiative and new token issuing to collect more funds.
Within several months, all that was left was gone too. After that, the legal advisor of the project advised the team to simply delete the website. Shortly thereafter, the company was set up for liquidation proceedings in order for the Arbidex staff, management, shareholders and beneficiaries to escape any financial, legal and criminal consequences.
The Shareholder
Born in 1995, Bulat Safaev (Булат Эльбикович Сафаев) was definitely one of the youngest members of the Arbidex Team. However, being a 49% shareholder of Arbidex Limited he was definitely not the least important one. Safaev is the son of Elbek Safaev, who was one of the big shots in the industrial scene of Tatarstan in Russia, before being jailed for corruption. As many children of Russian entrepreneurs, Safaev holds a Cypriot passport, although it remains unclear whether it was acquired through a golden passport scheme. (Note: We sent a request on this to Cypriot authorities to clarify this matter).His appearance on social media resembles the typical lifestyle of a trust-fund baby, if it was not for his major role in Arbidex. Thanks to his father’s wealth Safaev attended the Stowe School, one of the UK’s most prestigious private schools before starting his education in architecture. Safaev and Denis Kobyakov, the second major shareholder of Arbidex are closely connected via Vlada Krivtsova. Krivtsova, who like Safaev resides in London, is a 51% shareholder in the Russian OOO Blockchain Tech, with Denis Kobyakov holding the other 49% and the position of the managing director. The connection between Safaev and Krivtsova, on the other hand, is even more intimate - the two Londoners from Russia were a couple for many years.
The fact that the Arbidex pyramid scheme collapsed and deprived many clients of their money, did not really have a major impact on Bulat Safaev’s life so far. He continues to live in London and is already engaging in new crypto projects.
Recently, Safaev opened an individual entrepreneurship in Russia, which makes us wonder, what new “business ventures” we can expect from him. We hope to read about them on his LinkedIn profile.
Closing Shop - 15th of July 2021
When users started getting nervous the Arbidex team turned to their legal advisor. Their problem: Arbidex Limited is a company registered in the UK and they were facing potential lawsuits.
The lawyer on his part apparently advised Kamilia Arslanova (later Zakirova) to simply turn off the website of Arbidex and this way cut off users from accessing their wallets.
The text shows how Kamilia Arslanova told Andrei Bratyakin, the manager of the project at that time to turn off the website, referring to her discussion with Rustam Rafikov:
“Hi Andrei
Regarding the website and social media
I talked to to Rustam and he said that it is necessary to completely remove the website and domain http://arbidex.uk.com to make sure there are no legal consequences for the previous team. We plan to do this in the next 48 hours. OK?
One of the clients says that he filed complaints against myself with the authorities”.