Celsius wants to bring on former CFO as adviser for bankruptcy proceedings

Crypto lender Celsius Network has submitted a motion to bring on former CFO Rod Bolger as an advisor to help with its bankruptcy proceedings. A hearing will take place on August 8 to consider the motion. 

Bolger worked for the company for just five months before resigning in June. He replaced Yaron Shalem, who was arrested in November over alleged fraud related to cryptocurrency, and was later replaced by Chris Ferraro. 

According to the motion filed in the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, Bolger gave eight week’s notice on June 30. As a result, he is still an employee of the company for another month. 

The motion stated that Bolger will be paid Canadian $120,000 ($93,188) a month for a minimum of six weeks. It said that this agreement would provide Celsius with his “much-needed accounting and financial expertise during unprecedented times for [Celsius].” 

The advisory salary will be higher pro rata than Bolger’s base salary is at present. He currently earns $750,000 per year and would have gone on to receive performance-based cash bonuses, up to 800,000 CEL tokens ($688,000) and restricted stock, had he not resigned. 

Prior to Celsius, Bolger spent 10 years at RBC, most recently as its CFO. He has had previous stints at Bank of America and Citi.

On July 13, Celsius filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The crypto lender said that it had a $1.2 billion hole in its balance sheet, but it also counted $600 million of CEL tokens as assets, despite that being many times greater than CEL’s entire market cap (meaning that it would be hard to realize a fraction of that in the short term — putting the shortfall much higher).

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