Russian Lawyers Claim 200,000 BTC Lost In Mt. Gox Can Be Recovered

Authored by Joeri Cant via CoinTelegraph,

Russian law firm Zheleznikov and Partners proposed legal action in Russia that should enable its lawyers to recover up to 200,000 Bitcoin lost in the Mt. Gox fiasco.

image courtesy of CoinTelegraph

Recover losses on behalf of Mt. Gox victims

On Sept. 12 in a Q&A with Andy Pag, a former BBC journalist, the Moscow law firm outlined its proposal to recover close to $2 billion in BTC on behalf of the victims of the hack of the now-defunct Mt. Gox exchange, which according to its lawyers has the promise of making the Mt. Gox victims whole.

Lawyers of Zheleznikov and Partners believe that thanks to the close cooperation with law enforcement they can recover up to 200,000 BTC by taking legal action against Russian nationals who got the stolen money. The Russian legal team pointed out that some of these individuals have already been identified, but added:

“We want to make clear that we do not yet know the identities of all persons. We have strong reasons to believe that their identities will be revealed by the police investigation bringing existing information together, but we hope that once the criminal case starts they will come forward quickly and offer to give compensation to victims.”

Law firm will charge creditors up to 75% percent of recovered sum

This proposed recovery of the stolen BTC coins doesn’t come cheap, as the law firm wants to charge creditors up to 75% of the recovered sum. The Russian legal team does add that the company will only accept payment in the event of a successful recovery. 

The mess that was Mt. Gox

Cointelegraph previously reported that Mt. Gox holds its infamous part of Bitcoin’s history as the once biggest cryptocurrency exchange that went under in a cloud of confusion and anger. In February 2014 the exchange slowly started to capitulate, ending in the company filing for bankruptcy. Mt. Gox stated at the time that almost 750,000 of its customers’ Bitcoins, as well as 100,000 of its own Bitcoins, had been stolen. The total loss constituted around 7% of all Bitcoins available, worth around $473 million at the time.