To be exact, the prosecutors filed charges against the individuals behind the illegal payment processor B2G. We have reported extensively in recent years about the Cologne registered B2G GmbH and its principals, the German Rainer Treuer, and former Russian secret agent Oleg Shvartsman. B2G was one of the very big notorious German laundromats and scam facilitators in the binary option era. Among others, they laundered money for Gal Barak and E&G Bulgaria and dozens of other scams.
Key data
| Jurisdiction | Cologne, Germany |
| Legal entities | B2G GmbH, Germany, and B2G s.r.o., Czech Republic |
| Individuals | Oleg Shvartsman, Rainer Treuer et al |
| Charges | fraud facilitating, money laundering |
| Related cases | E&G Bulgaria |
The indictment
After years of investigation, the public prosecutor’s office in Cologne brought charges against the B2G principals Rainer Treuer and Oleg Shvartsman (pictured left). They facilitated huge binary options scams such as Blue Trading or XTraderFX.
We have communicated with both of them in detail. Oleg Shvartsman has explicitly admitted that B2G processed deposits from victims of various binary options scams. However, he did not understand why this should be a problem. After all, he would only have provided a service. Thus the argumentation of Shvartman. His partner Rainer Treuer argued similarly.
Rainer Treuer has developed extensive real estate activities in the B2G environment. We currently do not know if the B2G people used these real estate ventures to launder the scammers’ money. We expect the indictment shortly and will report accordingly.
EFRI complaint
We reported in June 2020 that the European Fund Recovery Initiative (EFRI) filed a criminal complaint against B2G and its related partners and individuals. In Cologne, Germany, the Public Prosecutor’s Office commenced comprehensive investigations that now led to charges.
In the process, investigators could also access data from the E&G Bulgaria proceedings. The Austrian law enforcement authorities seized these at the beginning of 2019 during the Action Days at the offices of this cybercrime organization in Bulgaria. So the evidence should be overwhelming. It is now a matter of legal assessment, which is up to court.
Sorry, you have been wrong!
Recently, Oren Sh. – a leading Israeli binary options operator and broker brand and a partner of arrested Kfir Levy – let us kindly know that it would be ridiculous to think that the payment processors or white label operators behind the scams could be indicted. FinTelegram and EFRI would be utterly wrong with their approach, he claimed. Well, the B2G indictment falsified this opinion.
We are convinced that more indictments against payment processors are coming. The truth is that they are part of the criminal organization and facilitate their investment fraud with their services. Therefore, they may very well be charged and convicted.
