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UK court says Chinese law applies to seized Bitcoin ownership claims
A London judge rejected victims' attempt to use English law to claim more than 61,000 seized Bitcoin, currently valued at about $5 billion.
A London judge rejected Chinese fraud victims' bid to use English law to claim more than 61,000 seized Bitcoin, ruling that Chinese law governs ownership claims over the cryptocurrency, currently worth about $5 billion, according to CryptoSlate.
The decision, issued Oct. 12 by High Court Justice Mark Turner, said proving investors were defrauded is not enough to establish entitlement to the Bitcoin acquired using fraud proceeds, leaving thousands of victims facing a potentially difficult recovery battle.
The case involves investment schemes run by Zhimin Qian through Tianjin Lantian Gerui Electronic Technology and related businesses between 2014 and 2017, which the court’s agreed factual background says raised about 40.23 billion yuan, or roughly 4.1 billion pounds, through at least 128,409 investment contracts.
The court also cautioned that the number of contracts should not be treated as the number of individual victims, indicating the distribution of losses and claimants could be more complex than the contract count suggests.
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