Indeed, Caisse de Depot et Placement du Quebec (CDPQ) had invested $150 million in Celsius back in October 2021, as part of a $400 million funding round co-led by WestCap Investment Partners LLC, Bloomberg’s Mathieu Dion reported on July 20. According to an emailed statement by CPDQ’s spokesperson Maxime Chagnon: Reportedly, CPDQ’s October contribution increased Celsius’s valuation by over $3 billion, and Chagnon stated that his company was “making every effort to preserve our rights,” without providing any more details on this effort.
‘A very small portion’ involved
That said, he did explain that a portion of the fund’s portfolio was indeed committed to risk assets that have the possibility of high yield, but that some of these investments, e.g. the one in Celsius, aren’t panning out as CPDQ had expected: At the time of the investment, CPDQ’s Chief Technology Officer Alexandre Synnett referred to Celsius as “the world’s leading crypto lender with a strong management team that put transparency and customer protection at the core of their operations.”
Accusations of Ponzi-like con job
Meanwhile, Celsius has been slapped with a class action suit accusing it of selling unregistered securities in a Ponzi-like scheme and convincing investors to purchase its financial products at inflated rates. In early July, Celsius’s former investment manager Jason Stone also filed a lawsuit allegedly claiming that his ex-employer was involved in crypto market manipulation without implementing basic accounting measures to protect customer deposits, as Finbold reported.
