The judge overseeing the Celsius bankruptcy case has ordered the examiner and the official committee of Celsius creditors to determine who will head a probe into whether the firm was operating like a Ponzi scheme.
The order during the Nov. 1 hearing comes in response to allegations from customers that Celsius had used assets of new users to pay yields and facilitate withdrawals to existing users, and as a result, fits the legal definition of a Ponzi scheme.
The judge had approved the Ernennung vun engem onofhängegen Examinator on Sep. 9 to look into aspects of Celsius’ business, following calls for greater transparency into its operations such as its tax payment procedures and why some customers were moved to different accounts.
It is not the first time the embattled lender has been accused of operating like a Ponzi scheme, with dezentraliséierten Finanzen (DeFi) protocol KeyFi having alleged that Celsius acts like one when it sued Celsius on July 7.
Celsius haten agereecht fir Kapitel 11 Faillite on July 13, citing a crash in crypto values and poor asset deployment decisions, and the case has been proceeding through the court system since.
In the Nov. 1 hearing, the Federal judge, Martin Glenn, also told Celsius that they would have to gehéiert more details in its Oct. 11 motion to pay nearly $3 million to 62 employees as part of a key employee retention plan (KERP), with Law360 zitéiert the judge as saying:
“I was shocked when I saw the redactions. I had never seen anyone try to redact everything.”
Glenn is referring to a section within the motion that outlines the participants of the bonus, where every detail relating to the individuals available to the public had been redacted including their salaries and job descriptions.
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The United States Trustee had ginn an objection on Oct. 27 to the KERP, taking issue with the lack of identifiable metrics within the motion to warrant such an expensive bonus scheme and that it prevented interested parties from arguing whether some participants could be considered insiders and therefore ineligible for a KERP.
Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/judge-orders-probe-to-investigate-whether-celsius-was-a-ponzi