Jean Bilala was a conman long before his Letscoin scam

Featuring Ithuba Credit Corporation, Ithuba Savings and Credit, Ithuba Investment Bank and Statutory Trust, Ithuba Holdings, Banyan Investment Banking and Hedge Fund, and others.

Earlier this month, REDD-Monitor wrote about a crypto company called Letscoin. The company claims to have “secured” an agreement for 3 billion carbon credits from Bolivia.

Letscoins are supposed to be stablecoins, but the coins are anything but stable. When I wrote about Letscoin, it was worth 0.458 USDT. Since then it’s crashed to 0.024 USDT.

USDT, by the way, is the Tether stablecoin. I probably should have mentioned in my post about Letscoin that Bloomberg recently described Tether as follows:

Tether has become the go-to digital currency of the criminal world. North Korea’s regime, Mexican drug traffickers and Southeast Asia-based human traffickers and scammers have all been caught using it to move millions of dollars.

But this post isn’t about Letscoin, Tether, cryptocurrency, or even dodgy carbon credit deals.

This post is about Letscoin’s CEO, Jean Bilala. It turns out he has something of a colourful history.

Solax Energia Altiplano

On 31 January 2021, a Mexican company called Solax Energia Altiplano S.A DE. C.V. and a US company called Solax Energy LLC filed a legal complaint in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York against Jean Bilala, Sefudi Paul Maleka, Ithuba Credit Corporation and several more Ithuba group companies.

Solax is a solar energy company which in 2013 received approval to build a 37 MW solar farm in Villa de Arista, San Luis Potosí, Mexico.

Solax needed a US$100 million loan to start construction. In 2018, according to the legal complaint, executives and representatives of Solax met representatives of Sefudi Group and Ithuba Savings and Credit Corporation in Johannesburg, South Africa. A loan agreement was signed under which Ithuba Savings and Credit Corporation would raise the funds and make the loan.

Solax had to pay an upfront fee of US$780,000 to the lender bank, ISC Bank, supposedly based in Germany.

But in September 2018, BaFin, the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, put out a warning that, “ISC Bank is not a German bank”:

The legal complaint states that,

An attachment to the Loan Agreement stated that “due to Bank raising unacceptable issues, we hereby change Banking Coordinates to the head office of ISC,” and then lists Ithuba Savings and Credit Corp. located in Indonesia.

The loan was supposed to be paid to two instalments. Solax duly wired US$780,000 to Sefudi Group. The money was transferred to Europlaw Group Incorporated.

Judging from its website, Europlaw Group has close links to the Ithuba Group of companies:

In November 2022, Europlaw Group was placed under provisional liquidation in the High Court of South Africa North Gauteng, Pretoria, because it could not pay its debts. The judgment refers in passing to “financially destitute farmers” who were introduced by a subsidiary of Europlaw Group to a “fraudulent scheme”.

From Europlaw Group, the US$780,000 was “transferred to an account for Ithuba Credit Corporation”, according to the legal complaint.

Under the loan agreement, the Ithuba group of companies was supposed to deliver the first tranche of US$40 million by early October 2018, and the second tranche within 60 days of the first tranche.

When the legal complaint was filed, more than three years later, no payments had been made, and the upfront fee had not been returned.

Hannes van Niekerk is named as the compliance and administrative officer of Ithuba Credit Corporation in the legal complaint. He is also chief commercial officer of Letscoin.

Ithuba sent several letters promising that the loan would be delivered. One stated that the “loan process was in the absolute final stage”. Another explained that because the loan was an international transaction, it had to be cleared by many authorities, in Hong Kong, Jakarta, and the US. Again and again, Ithuba promised that the “funding is still on track”.

In April 2020, Solax demanded a total of US$1.6 million from Ithuba. That figure included US$900,000 as the then-value of the upfront fee; US$400,000 to cover Solax’s administration and travel expenses; and US$300,000 to cover Solax’s engineering, procurement, and construction expenses in Mexico.

Sefudi replied that Ithubi’s chairman, Jean Bilala, was in New York, but because of the coronavirus lockdown, the loan would have to wait until business resumed. Solax pointed out that banking services had not been shut down.

Ithuba then promised to refund the upfront fee.

Surprise! It didn’t.

Ithuba and the other defendants filed a motion to dismiss. That was denied in November 2021. Since then, the defendants have failed to plead or take any action regarding the case.

In May 2023, the judge ruled in favour of the plaintiffs and referred the case to the Magistrate Judge for an inquest on damages.

A telephone conference to “discuss scheduling the damages inquest” is scheduled for today (24 February 2025).

Olive Energy

In November 2024, another case was filed against Jean Bilala and several Ithuba companies, in the District Court of Dallas County, Texas.

In October 2023, according to the court documents, Olive Energy and Ithuba entered into a loan agreement for US$150 million. Olive Energy was required to pay upfront fees “to facilitate the financing process” of US$1.65 million.

Ithuba failed to secure the financing. Once again Ithuba repeatedly promised that the money was on the way. But no money was transferred.

In May 2024, Olive Energy requested a return of the US$1.65 million upfront fee. Once again, Ithuba agreed. And once again, no money was transferred.

Banyan Investment Banking and Hedge Fund

In September 2023, Banyan Investment Banking and Hedge Fund bought Ithuba Credit Corporation, a Hong Kong-based company. As we know, Bilala is the man behind Ithuba. He’s also the man behind Banyan Investment Banking and Hedge Fund.

According to the press release, under the deal Banyan Investment has increased its assets by “over US$25 billion”. Banyan Investment’s Executive Chairman and Trustee (otherwise known as Jean Bilala) said that “this 100% acquisition is based on mutual synergies evident in visions and goals of the two companies”.

Of course, the “mutual synergies” should hardly be a surprise given Bilala’s role in both companies.

A couple of weeks before that deal, a company called Darwin Platform Refineries signed a deal with Banyan Investment as capital financier for an oil exploration and drilling project in India.

Under the project financing agreement the companies “committed to initial investment of US$58 million immediately”. According to the press release, Darwin appointed Thana Balan, the company’s Chairman Emeritus, as the administrator of the collaboration between Darwin and Banyan Investment.

Balan is the co-founder of Letscoin. He also works for Banyan Investment.