Turkey: Crypto exchange CEO flees country as probe is launched

Remaining assets of active users on now-shuttered Thodex exchange ‘irretrievable’, says lawyer.

The Turkish crypto exchange Thodex ceased operations and its chief executive officer has fled the nation amid allegations that hundreds of millions of dollars were stolen. A prosecutor in Istanbul has launched an investigation and police are searching the Thodex offices, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported. The trading platform is “unable” to continue operations with founder and CEO Faruk Fatih Ozer out of the country, the company said in a written statement earlier Thursday. While not the largest Turkish crypto exchange, the shuttering of the platform has left the remaining assets of about 390,000 active users “irretrievable,” according to Oguz Evren Kilic, who represents an unspecified number of Thodex users and has filed a legal complaint on their behalf.