Crypto lender Genesis Global Capital sued its parent company, Digital Currency Group, in two courts in a bid to recover billions of dollars for creditors.
In a complaint made public Monday in the Delaware Chancery Court, Genesis is seeking 1 million coins, valued at approximately $2.1 billion, to pay back creditors.
The Delaware suit accuses DCG, its founder and CEO Barry Silbert, and other insiders of reckless loan activities, lacking reasonable risk management, and using "other people's money" to enrich themselves.
The complaint, which is partially redacted, also accused Silbert and others of intentionally misleading customers about the company's financial stability through a "misinformation" campaign and by manipulating financial disclosures.
The alleged misconduct benefited DCG and its bitcoin trust, Grayscale Investments LLC, at customers' expense, the suit said.
The allegations "show a pattern of self-dealing, fraud, and mismanagement that deprived hundreds of individual Genesis creditors and institutional lenders of billions of dollars of value in crypto and fiat assets," Philippe Selendy of Selendy Gay, representing the Genesis litigation oversight committee, said in a statement.
Genesis said in a separate suit filed Monday in the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York that various insiders, including DCG, Silbert, and affiliates, sent transfers to one another while the company was insolvent. It's seeking to recover over $1 billion in transfers made the year before its bankruptcy filing.
The firm seeks to avoid the transfers as preferences under bankruptcy law and recover their value. The crypto payments are worth over $582 million, while the preferential transfers amount to over $1.2 billion as of March 31, according to the New York filing.
The transfers in crypto and US dollars totaled $448 million to DCG, $136 million to DCG International, and $101 million to DCG subsidiary HQ Enhanced Yield Fund, among others, according to the New York suit.
Additionally, Genesis aims to recover $34 million in tax payments made to DCG, alleging that those transfers were fraudulent and didn't correspond to legitimate liabilities.
The New York suit contends that the defendants initiated transfers during a turbulent time in the cryptocurrency industry, including the collapse of stablecoin Terra-Luna, the downfall of cryptocurrency hedge fund Three Arrows Capital, and the fallout from FTX Trading's bankruptcy in 2022. DCG knew that Genesis' business was on the verge of collapse at the time, the suit said.
"DCG recognized the existential threat to Genesis and, with it, to DCG and the Insider Defendants that had loaned Genesis hundreds of millions of dollars," the firm said.
Genesis was insolvent by the end of 2021, having accrued $14 billion in outstanding loans, according to the court filing. The crypto lender filed for bankruptcy in 2023 and emerged last year over the objections of DCG, which had argued that the bankruptcy exit plan gave creditors a windfall at its expense.
The crypto lender attributed its insolvency to structural risks and a lack of internal controls, which it said its parent and insiders were aware of but failed to address.
DCG didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Selendy Gay PLLC represents Genesis. Weil Gotshal & Manges LLP represents DCG.