British government wants to keep $ 7 billion in stolen bitcoin that seized it

The British government tries to withhold most of the $ 7 billion Bitcoin It was a grip in connection with a Chinese investment fraud, after the conviction of the alleged organizer of the fraud this week.

Zhimin Qian argued guilty of the counts of owning and transferring criminal property to Southwark Crown Court on Monday, after last year’s conviction about her assistant Seng Hok Ling (also known as Jian Wen) on similar counts.

This conviction now raises the question of whom the 61,000 BTC originally seized by the British authorities in 2018, with more than 120,000 victims in China who are looking for compensation for their losses.

The Crown Prosecution Service has started civil recovery procedures at the British High Court, which will organize the next hearing in the case in January.

Compensate the victims

Between 2014-2017, Qian carried out an extensive investment fraud schedule, converted into Bitcoin with the illegally obtained funds.

Deciding how the victims of the fraud can be compensated can be a difficult process, but legal experts suggest that the claimants are entitled to compensation, provided that they can make a sufficient link with the seized BTC.

“I am not sure whether the English law to the British government here is about whether it can retain the confiscated bitcoin,” said Ashley Fairbrother, a partner at Edmonds Marshall McMahon, said Decrypt.

Fairbrother noted that the victims of the fraud submitted and are able to submit applications on the basis of section 281 of the revenues of Crime ACT 2002, and that their right to submit a claim to frozen property under the last law was properly established.

“Ordinary fair tracing principles apply and a victim can determine his own claim through various flexible routes with confidence legislation,” he said. “The victims have the right to choose the route that best benefits them.”

Although there is more than one route to claim the right to the seized property, the High Court can ultimately accept an approach that better suits the British government.

According to Fairbrother, this includes “A Pari Passu [proportional distribution] Approach, so that victims can take the funds in relation to their contributions ”to the fraudulent investment schedule.

Fairbrother called Robb’s case against the National Crime Agency, for which “each of the victim’s shares would be calculated by determining their individual payments as a percentage of the total payments of investors and applying the same percentage to the fund.”

Such an approach can ‘considerably’ the victims of the fraud, who originally lost around £ 640 million of fraud, but who are looking for a return of their property plus any market profit.

However, Fairbrother also suggested that, even if the law of the victims is determined as part of civil proceedings, they can receive a fee that is only equal to the value they have lost at that time.

“In recent cases I have been involved, the courts compensated the victim to the value of the money they lost, in GBP instead of BTC,” he said. “This approach would see that all victims have compensated for the value of the amounts they lost in Fiat -Maluta, and the British state to take advantage of the substantial increase in the value of BTC.”

The outcome can therefore be unsatisfactory to the victims, a large group of which is represented by the London -based international law firm Fieldfisher, who cooperates with the law in China.

In a statement to DecryptWilliam Glover and Stephen Cartwright – who are working on the case – said that some victims ‘have lost their life of life’, where many of the affected are vulnerable or the elderly.

“The victims have been without their property for ten years now and have the right to get their property back from the Bitcoin friends in this jurisdiction,” they said.

Glover and Cartwright also stated that the frozen Bitcoin is not part of the British state.

They added: “The British state does not have the right to freely remove the frozen Bitcoin about the legitimate legal and ownership interests of victims.”

Given such views, the approaching civil procedures may be controversial and they may be able to extend until 2027.

Hodl or sell?

Even assuming that the British government determines its privilege to retain the majority of the frozen BTC, the question will arise to sell the money or to hold them to them.

According to the Financial timesUnnoticed Treasury officials have reportedly asked private questions about whether the crypto compassion could go to connect a ‘black hole’ between $ 34 billion and $ 67 billion in the public finances of the United Kingdom. HM Treasury did not respond immediately DecryptThe request for comments.

However, if the British government were to sell the confiscated bitcoin, there will remain a chance that it would be able to risk a repeat of his controversial sale of gold from 1999, at a time when the gold prices were in a bear market.