David Ruiz de León: The judge orders the arrest and imprisonment of the founder of Kuailian for a cryptocurrency scam | Economy
Judge Joaquín Gadea, instructor at the National High Court, has run out of patience. The magistrate has issued an international search and arrest warrant against David Ruiz de León, founder of the Kuailian platform, a company supposedly specialized in investing in cryptocurrencies and which he is investigating as the epicenter of an alleged pyramid scheme. The magistrate charged the businessman in May and has called him twice to testify, but the suspect has made different and repeated excuses for not attending the appointment.
As the judge emphasizes in a resolution of June 30, Ruiz de León has shown “will” to want to “hinder” the investigations of the National Court. After accusing him, Gadea scheduled his interrogation for the first time on May 27. But the businessman’s defense argued that he was “indisposed” and very affected, so he did not attend the appointment, despite the fact that no coroner in the court could verify it. Again, the instructor called him to appear in person on June 23, but the suspect said that he was in Dubai – where he claims he resides – and asked to testify by videoconference. A request that the magistrate rejected, who then suffered the second sit-in.
Faced with such an attitude, the instructor justified his international search and arrest warrant. According to the judge, who orders his arrest and immediate imprisonment, there is a clear risk of escape. Ruiz de León “is outside the national territory”, he has not “appeared at the judicial summons that has been made to him on two occasions” and there are elements that “incriminate” him. Gadea also details that he faces sentences of “up to eight years in prison” for alleged crimes of aggravated fraud, money laundering and criminal organization.
According to the summary of Kuailian case, this company advertised through its website and social networks an investment system in cryptocurrencies through an entity (Kuailian App) based in Estonia, but operating from Spain. This promised high profits, but there came a time when it began to breach the conditions it had agreed to with its users. The judge emphasizes that those responsible had allegedly launched a pyramid scheme through a mechanism of “mass recruitment” of potential investors.
“The clients, according to the agreed conditions, could get more affiliates for the platform through their account, and received 10% of the investment of those captured in their first level, 3% of those of the second level, 2% in the third level and so on up to a total of 20% invested by each one. This generated an exponential network of massive uptake […] The attraction of new investors would feed the base of the pyramid, allowing the return and payment of benefits to the initial investors, without the operation responding to a real business”, Gadea pointed out in a car.
The magistrate has also issued a search and arrest warrant against another person under investigation: Cristian Albeiro Carmona Hernández. This defendant, who also claims to live in Dubai, also avoided attending the judge’s call. As detailed by Kuailian in an April 2021 statement, Carmona is the owner of a company that “offers digital asset exchange services.”
