Being the first one to write about the Neo & Bee bitcoin campaign in Cyprus, I was pleased to see how it has caught the interest and attention of a new contributor yesterday. Being retired and also since yesterday was a public holiday in Cyprus I chose to enjoy the sunshine and refrained from writing anything about this debacle yesterday, although the various related rumours had indeed reached my ears in the recent few days. However, things were confused and unclear and since some attempts to get to the true facts failed, I chose to sit out and wait for some real, reliable information before posting about this topic again.
Today, after a short wait, the ugly truth has emerged, straight from the horse’s mouth. Danny Brewster, the CEO of LMB Holdings, which is the parent company of Neo & Bee, and the main stakeholder in this entire story, broke his silence and “dished the dirt”. Things had indeed got out of control on the official thread for the topic on bitcointalk.org with certain posts threatening the extended family members of Brewster, forcing him to come clean. The full text of his response is as cited below, to allow all our readers to reach their own conclusions:
“So this thread has gotten out of hand and will be locked following this post.
My recent silence has been forced due to the actions of two people, one of which has been posting on here thinking they know me and have the inside knowledge about my life which is largely false and they really should obtain some better sources, however those posts had much wider ramifications than they probably assumed they would have, so I hold them partially responsible for what has occurred since their posts.
I left Cyprus on a short term temporary basis for reasons that will follow, I haven’t shipped anything from Cyprus and I certainly haven’t run away with company or peoples money or bitcoins. Following those posts on the forum, I received direct threats targeted directly at my daughter, they have been reported to the relevant authorities, Once those threats were made I took the advice to remain outside of Cyprus and remove contact with anyone that could be responsible for the threats, this included not speaking with members of staff that could be responsible.
My reasons for leaving was to raise additional capital for the business through the sale of my equity as we had run out of liquidity, I had exhausted all of my own liquidity too through directors loans to the company. Every single Bitcoin raised and spent is accounted for, any claims of embezzlement are nothing but empty claims with no foundation. There were coins lost in BitFunder/WeExchange which I personally covered and assumed that debt of 1420BTC to ensure the company could continue unaffected, UKYO also owes me an additional 260BTC separately from the 1420BTC. I also have 369.8BTC of my own Bitcoin stuck with MtGox that would have been given to the company to settle all creditors and continue operations whilst more capital was raised. Having funds on MtGox was a personal risk that I assumed and no company funds were ever held on there.
My original plan was to raise more capital to allow the company to achieve its potential through the sale of some of my equity. The moment threats were made towards my daughter this plan changed and I decided I would sell all of my equity, allowing the new owner to appoint a new CEO.
The whole process will be completed and handled through an agency that specializes in these matters, once the final details are completed, the agency details will be made available to interested parties who wish to purchase 100% of my equity in LMB Subsidiaries Ltd thus taking full control of all subsidiaries. I shall also be providing the new owner full rights over the Bitcoin debts currently owed by BitFunder/WeExchange as I know people are working on a solution to recovering those debts for everyone that has funds stuck there. This process will also write off all directors loans I have made to the company and I shall not receive any financial compensation through this sale process.
My biggest mistake was using BitFunder/WeExchange during the initial stages of fund raising, had I not had to cover those losses my pockets would have been deep enough to cover all creditors and OPEX for the foreseeable future allowing the company to achieve a positive cash flow during that period, the choice was one made by myself and for that I am responsible for that decision. I am working towards having this entire process completed within a short period of time to enable the business to recover, to ensure that those invested do not lose out following this process.
I apologize for my silence but I would like to reiterate that ZERO customer funds are under my control and none have been lost or used for business purposes. My decisions are based on what I deem to be the best option for my family.”
In a nutshell, Danny cocked up….his plans were over-ambitious; his decisions miscalculated and were executed poorly. I always had my doubts about this, but I will echo the sentiments expressed yesterday on binaryoptionswire.com by Andy Rhys. I too wanted this to succeed, because it would have been a real breakthrough for digital currencies. Unfortunately we are once again faced with a dismal failure and will strike another, perhaps grave blow, to the confidence of people around the globe in the bitcoin and digital currencies in general.
From a Cypriot point of view I also regret this failure since some circles in Cyprus saw potential in this, such as the University of Nicosia, the Cyprus Stock Exchange or even the Parliamentary Commerce Committee, which had a special session on the topic just a few days ago.
Brewster took the blame for the mess, re-assured that no client funds are at risk and say that the company can be saved through a new ownership and a new CEO. Somehow I don’t think so…at least not in Cyprus…not anymore. I believe that the sooner we all forget all about this story, the better…but I do want to thank Brewster for the very clever and interesting media and advertising campaign he had conducted during this short-lived despite, despite its failure to attract the expected client base that would have kept the company solvent and away from trouble.
