The British financial Supervisory Authority (FCA) removed a warning about the onecoin pyramid scheme from its website under pressure from lawyers, the authors of the "Missing crypto-Queen" podcast on BBC Sound found.

Journalists Jamie Bartlett and Georgina Kat met with lawyer Gary Guilford, who was hired by OneCoin representatives to create a London family office to manage the assets of the project's founder, Ruja Ignatova.

According to him, former spy Frank Schneider, a partner at OneCoin, brought in law firm Carter-Ruck and reputation management company Chelgate to pressure the FCA.

As soon as the warning about potential fraud disappeared from the regulator's website, onecoin representatives used it for a PR campaign. For many victims, this was a convincing argument in favor of the pyramid, Bartlett said.

The FCA stated that they do not regulate cryptocurrency assets, so they did not deal with the OneCoin case.