Now we have covered all companies known to me with connection to FTX and address either in Germany or Switzerland. In the process, we have come across some names again and again.
Let’s take a closer look:
Max Hartmut Alexander Rhotert:
Has already been discussed under FTX Trading GmbH. Managing Director of several Swiss FTX companies with relationship to Binance Deutschland GmbH & CO KG and Kephas Stiftung GmbH.
Henry Raatz:
He was also already mentioned under FTX Trading GmbH. Data Protection and Complience of FTX Europe AG and FTX Trading GmbH. Also involved with Kephas Stiftung GmbH.
Patrick Gruhn:
Was mentioned under companies related to Rhotert Max. Managing director of Kephas Stiftung GmbH / K-TV, as well as CredoMedia GmbH.
His LinkedIn information is quite interesting:
Patrick Gruhn
Head of FTX Europe: but that was not how it was mapped in data from northdata.de when we looked at FTX Europe AG.
Partner at Crypto Lawyers LLC: I refer here to FTX Switzerland GmbH, which we have already looked at. "Crypto Lawyers LLC" is a former company name of that.
Robin Matzke:
This person first came to our attention in connection with FTX Europe AG, and I find the resume quite interesting:
Robin Matzke 1
Translation: Robin Matzke is a lawyer. He is an advisor to the german parliament. He is completing his dissertation at the humbold university in berlin on phantom stocks
wat
Robin Matzke 2
Digital Assets AG is the previous name of FTX Europe AG.
Academic Advisor at Bundestag is also quite exciting.
He is also managing director in following companies:
lorem ipsum RM UG HRB 204593 B
OWN Capital GmbH HRB 212051 B
Lambda Law Rechtsanwaltsgesellschaft mbH HRB 216921 B
As well as former managing director of:
Tz Connect GmbH HRB 217347 B former company name Tezos Hub GmbH
Jürg Bavaud:
Jürg Bavaud
This name has appeared many times during this research. Managing director of all FTX companies in Switzerland.
LinkedIn profile deleted. In general, this gentleman seems to have done some digital cleaning on the Internet.
Here's a summary of companies where he acts as managing director:
Jürg Bavaud, Unteriberg | business-monitor.ch
Managing director of following companies, which were not listed until now:
MKY Group AG CHE-131.384.671 (I promise this will be the last company)
The address of this company is:
Industriestrasse 28, 9100 Herisau, Switzerland.
Screenshot Google Maps:
MKY Group AG / K&G Lawyers / Money Key GmbH
Here is the leadership of MKY Group AG:
MKY
And again, Ernest Ukaj.
I believe this is his “real” company location. MKY Group AG has two other people in team with the name Ukaj.
You can find this video on youtube of him talking about his companies and you get a look inside this building. In the last 30 sec of this video, he tells that one of his biggest achievements was selling a crypto company to one of the biggest crypto exchanges in the world. Which one could that be?
And in this video he shows how to start a shell company through his Money Key company by using google assistant lol.
All his current companies:
Ernest Ukaj, Gossau (SG) | business-monitor.ch
Ernest Ukaj
He also worked for Credit Suisse.
Mr. Ukaj has a Twitter account with very few followers / people he follows:
Ukaj Twitter
The accounts that Mr. Ukaj follows are concentrated in Crypto area.
However, I did not expect to find this one here:
DFV
No idea if this information is relevant, just found it funny.
At this point I would like to conclude my research, because it has taken a few hours more than I estimated at the beginning. When I was just looking into the company structure, I didn't realize how convoluted the whole thing is here and the number of shell companies that are going on.
This whole research is only a very small part of the whole FTX company structure.
You can find the whole structure here:
This DD only covered the buttom right corner.
Some company names are not up to date.
This summary should serve as a collection of information for those who want to research deeper or simply as information. It is astonishing how easy it seems to be to build up such shell structures in Germany / Switzerland. It seems to not being supervised at all if it could be practiced over years in such a way.
Finally: not your keys, not your coins. Not DRSd not your shares. If someone still has crypto on centralized exchanges, now would be the right time to transfer them to a self-custodian wallet. The insolvency wave of the exchanges has just begun in my opinion. Same goes for shares held at a brokerage.
Thank you for your attention.