How a Mexican billionaire’s $400 million bitcoin bet turned into a stock-loan nightmare

The Mexican billionaire wanted a large, fast bet on crypto in 2021.

• Ricardo Salinas alleges fraud in a $150M stock-backed loan deal
• Salinas claims lender sold his Elektra shares without consent
• Case highlights risks in private stock-backed lending markets

Did our AI summary help?

Ricardo Salinas Pliego likes to present himself as a man who invests in one thing: his own empire, Grupo Elektra. But in the spring of 2021, as bitcoin was ripping higher, Salinas wanted a large, fast bet on crypto. The problem was liquidity.

So he did what wealthy dealmakers often do when they want cash without selling assets: he borrowed against shares.

A London broker connected Salinas’s Swiss advisor to a lender called Astor Capital Fund. The pitch came wrapped in status. Astor, the advisor was told, was rooted in the wealth of the Astor family, backed by top-tier institutions and family offices. On a video call, the firm’s supposed chief executive, “Thomas Astor-Mellon,” spoke in an American accent and appeared to be calling from a yacht.

The deal sounded familiar: up to USD 150 million in cash secured against roughly USD 416 million worth of Elektra shares, with the rest of Salinas’s bitcoin financing coming from international

banks.

A contract that looked serious, and a seal that wasn’t

In July 2021, Salinas signed a 31-page stock-loan agreement with a Canadian-registered special-purpose vehicle called Astor Asset Management 3, created after his team asked for an onshore lender. The paperwork looked weighty and ceremonial, complete with a crowned winged-lion seal and Roman numerals.

But it also included a meaningless date, a detail Salinas later described as an early hint that the blue-

blooded branding was theatre.

What Salinas says happened next is the heart of the dispute, the Financial Times reported. Instead of holding his Elektra shares as collateral, he alleges the lender moved them out of his custody account, sold them into a thin market, and used the proceeds both to fund the “loan” and to enrich itself. “It was the perfect fraud,” Salinas says in the account. His complaint is blunt: if he wanted to sell his shares, he would have done it himself.

The names behind Astor, and a familiar playbook 

Salinas’s team later concluded that “Thomas Astor-Mellon” was Alexei Skachkov, a man with a criminal record in the United States, and that Astor’s “managing director,” Gregory Mitchell, was actually Val Sklarov, a Ukrainian-born American who has used multiple identities and a rotating set of entities and jurisdictions.

Sklarov rejects the fraud label. He frames the business as hard-edged lending to risky borrowers. In his telling, stock-loan borrowers often want cash against restricted or illiquid shares, and lenders protect themselves by selling collateral.

He also points to contract language about rehypothecation, the lender’s right to reuse pledged collateral, and to clauses that he says give the lender broad economic rights over the shares during the loan term.

Custodians, offshore venues, and a fight over access

The story also shows how vulnerable borrowers can be in private stock-backed lending. The lender often chooses the custodian holding the collateral, and can steer disputes into arbitration venues that are expensive and hard to navigate.

In Salinas’s case, the custodian was Bahamas-based Weiser. Advisors noticed unusual selling in Elektra shares and grew alarmed. Salinas says the custodian arrangements did not permit the lender to instruct sales. Sklarov claims the lender had power of attorney and that custodians follow their own rules.

Under pressure, Astor later swapped custodians, but Salinas says the underlying control problem remained. By 2024, Salinas’s team asked for proof the shares still existed. Astor objected, calling

direct outreach “interference,” and insisted it had disposal rights.

When Salinas offered to repay all lenders early to identify who still held the stock, three banks accepted, Salinas says, but Astor declared default and served a notice listing multiple alleged breaches. Salinas disputes that any default occurred.

Where the money went

Salinas hired investigations firm StoneTurn to trace what happened. Based on bank disclosures ordered by a New York court, StoneTurn estimated around USD 420 million was realised from Elektra share sales, with roughly USD 104 million appearing to fund the loan.

The report suggests a large portion of proceeds moved through accounts connected to entities with gilded-age names, including Cornelius Vanderbilt Capital Management, with significant sums allegedly ending up with Sklarov or related parties. Sklarov disputes control of those entities and challenges the tracing.

A market that rewards opacity

This saga sits inside a fast-growing corner of private finance: stock-backed lending, sometimes called Lombard lending. Done inside regulated banks, it can be routine.

Salinas is pursuing the case in England’s High Court, but admits recovery is uncertain.

The question he keeps returning to is simple and damning. Where is my stock?