CEO Bitvavo steps after revelations about violation of anti-money laundering rules

This article was last updated on July 4, 2025

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CEO Bitvavo steps after revelations about violation of anti-money laundering rules

Mark Nuvelstijn immediately steps up as the top man of the large Dutch crypto platform Bitvavo. The co -founder also does not return to the company, he says in a press statement. Nuvelstijn was discredited this week by publications The Financial Daily About the violation of money laundering rules and the benefit of prior knowledge trade.

Nuvelstijn had already temporarily resigned his position at Bitvavo yesterday. His company had started an internal investigation into him after the FD published about private investments with the now convicted investment fraudster Max R. and the band that the two had.

The business newspaper reported that Nuvelstijn had led the money laundering controls of his bank in the garden on large sums of money that he transferred to Max R. A few years ago, he said that it was a loan to prevent ING from reporting the transfers to supervisors who monitor the integrity of directors of financial institutions.

Crypt

The money would have been used, among other things, to take options in a listed company, to earn a lot from it thanks to prior knowledge. Bitvavo was in the past period under the magnifying glass of the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM), where the company had applied for a new license for crypto service providers. Exactly a week ago Bitvavo got that permit.

Whether Bitvavo will get into problems with that permit is not clear. In response, the AFM told the NOS that it does not respond to questions about companies that supervise.

In January last year, Bitvavo came into heavy weather after the American falls over Crypto dealer Genesis. Bitvavo had lent 280 million euros to the company. The top consumed customers with the announcement that the top would close a gap in the budget if Genesis’ money would not return.

According to WhatsApp messages that the FD published, Nuvelstijn tried to get his millions of inlay back to Max R. When this did not go fast enough, he used rather threatening language.

Account

Nuvelstijn says in a press statement that he does not want to burden Bitvavo with “an issue from the past about his private investments”. He says he wants to account for his actions in the coming period. “It is pure when I do that without a possible conflicting interest as a statutory director of Bitvavo,” said Nuvelstijn.

In the same press release, Bitvavo says it respect the Nuvelstijn decision. According to the company, it has long been the plan that the CEO would “transfer his duties in the long term”. A new top man should lead the rapidly growing bitvavo “to the next phase of growth”.

Financial director Johan van Olffen has been passed on by the Supervisory Board as a temporary CEO.

Nuvelstijn was one of the three founders of Bitvavo in 2018. The company grew into one of the largest crypto fairs in Europe in a few years. Bitvavo says he has more than 1.5 million customers, who can invest in more than 350 crypto coins. The general public also knows Bitvavo as one of the main sponsors of the Dutch national team.