Tadej Pogačar is the new “Global Brand Ambassador” of Ku Coin, a cryptocurrency exchange. He’s not the first or last athlete or celebrity to front for a crypto company.
This company has been on European warning lists, fined in Canada and the US. It’s also been in the news lately after being linked to a massive financial scandal in South-East Asia.
Loyal readers may remember Pogačar was tipped to do more corporate and media work over the winter. The idea was “he ought to be on cereal boxes, doing Gillette adverts” but alas the source was only half-right given he seems to have settled for cryptocurrency. Nevermind the asset class because the specific choice of Ku Coin is worth exploring.
Ku Coin is a big crypto trading platform founded in China and now run from the Seychelles. At one point it was ranked as the fourth biggest exchange by volume but has fallen down since. This means they might want a cheerful athlete with a big online following to promote them. And there is some good news to share as Ku Coin has become an approved business in Austria and in turn obtained a passport to operate across Europe. So it is a legitimate business in Europe. Only you can tell there’s a big but coming…
For years Ku Coin has been on warning lists after trying to operate in Europe without approval (here, here). It was also banned and fined in Ontario, Canada. It foolishly tried this in US which led to the US issuing arrest warrants for two of its founders. This lead to the company pleading guilty and paying $297 million in fines. Here’s former US attorney Danielle Sassoon:
“For years, KuCoin avoided implementing required anti-money laundering policies designed to identify criminal actors and prevent illicit transactions. As a result, KuCoin was used to facilitate billions of dollars’ worth of suspicious transactions and to transmit potentially criminal proceeds, including proceeds from darknet markets and malware, ransomware, and fraud schemes”
– Press release, US Attorney’s Office, New York , 27 January 2025
So far this doesn’t sound like a great company to associate with. Only things look worse a year later. Alarm bells rang last autumn when investigative reporting website Project Brazen featured Ku Coin and its Thai subsidiary. If you have any spare time the full article is really worth reading and is free if you sign up, to the point that you’re better off quitting this blog post to go read it.
It alleges a transnational “pig butchering” scam involving human trafficking, torture, forced detention with tentacles reaching into several countries, notably Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar linked to Chinese-born Cambodian resident Chen Zhi and Prince Group, a company he chaired.
A month after Brazen’s first article appeared the US Department of Justice moved to seize $15 billion in crypto assets, the largest ever seizure by a law agency apparently. The Chinese government objected to this, accusing the US of looting the funds. The US and UK have sanctioned Prince Group and Chen. Thai police issued arrest warrants for 42 people. The Thai deputy finance minister has resigned in order to clear his name. There have been shockwaves in Cambodia too with Chen reportedly being stripped of Cambodian citizenship by royal decree.
Things have not stopped there. If China objected to the US seizing the money, it has gone after Chen and recently extradited him from Cambodia. As the photo above shows he got conspicuous treatment on arrival which suggests Chen may not be enjoying full innocent-before-proven-guilty status. As it happens Chinese news agency Xinhua announced today that 11 people were executed for conducting an online scam operation in Myanmar after being extradited to China.
If this is all getting a long way from Tadej Pogačar, this is where Ku Coin apparently comes in. The proceeds of the Chen Zhi’s alleged crimes needed to be laundered. Project Brazen writes “fronts for KuCoin illegally took stakes in Finansia, secretly integrating a crypto exchange with the banking sector – a channel to move stolen crypto into the banking system without oversight”. Again it’s worth reading the full allegations for context. Finansia X has since rejected the claims and says it will sue.
The crucial point for a cycling blog is the allegation that Ku Coin was involved in criminal conspiracy to launder money from crime. Unlike past lapses where it might not have asked many questions about where client money was coming from, this time the claim is that it was actively conspiring which would be a serious crime. But for now we’ve read the allegations and they’re just that. We can give Ku Coin’s business in Thailand the right of being innocent as no court of law has found against it. But these stories are hot right now and it would be prudent for Pogačar and his entourage to have held off.
Conclusion
You can easily make the case that Tadej Pogačar is one of the world’s best athletes. Plus he enjoys a wholesome reputation, a cherubic look at races and a cheerful presence on social media. Good luck finding someone who knows him to say a bad word. He ought to be the face of Kelloggs cereal, Gillette razors, Pepsi Cola or Visa cards. Maybe all of them at the same time. Crypto? Meh, but why not. But Ku Coin?
Pogačar can’t be expected to spend his winter reading the Bangkok newspapers nor cross-checking US Department of Justice press releases and Dutch regulatory filings. But he pays people do do this for him. Whoever negotiated this deal on his behalf – and presumably collected the announcement fee – ought to have sat down in front of a search engine to read about Ku Coin as it looks risky to endorse the company right now. Yes it’s been approved for business in Europe now but has a history of rule-breaking and fines and this alone seems a poor match for Pogačar. But right now it is linked to a serious ongoing scandal. Ku Coin needs Tadej Pogačar a lot more than he needs them.