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Thousands of Chinese victims of an investment fraud are calling on Beijing to seek the return of more than £3bn worth of bitcoin seized in the UK.
A group representing victims of a £5bn scam run by Chinese company Tianjin Lantian Gerui Electronic Technology submitted a letter this week to the foreign ministry in Beijing asking it to launch negotiations with the UK government for recovery of bitcoin bought with their money.
The group, which also sent the letter to China’s public security ministry, said it had so far collected the signatures of nearly 2,500 victims supporting the call and planned to submit them to the ministries.
The request follows the conviction in Southwark Crown Court last month of British-Chinese woman Jian Wen on one count of helping her employer Zhimin Qian convert some of the bitcoin into cash, jewellery and property.
Qian ran off with money from more than 128,000 investors in China through a wealth management fraud between 2014 and 2017, according to UK prosecutors. Qian then converted the money into bitcoin and arrived in London in 2017 under a false identity. Her whereabouts are unknown.
During a raid on Qian and Wen’s mansion in Hampstead in 2018, London’s Metropolitan Police seized devices containing 61,000 bitcoin, currently worth more than £3bn. It was one of the biggest crypto hauls by a law enforcement agency anywhere in the world.
In their letter, a copy of which was seen by the Financial Times, the victims urged Chinese authorities to liaise with UK judicial departments and submit relevant evidence to prove the group was “legitimate owners of this huge amount of bitcoin”.
“There is no time to lose,” it said. “We do not want, and will never accept, a situation where bitcoins are confiscated by the UK and not returned to us.”
UK authorities have not made clear how they will deal with the seized bitcoin.
The Crown Prosecution Service said in March it had obtained from the High Court a property freezing order against Wen and confiscation would be discussed in September. Regarding the bulk of the bitcoin, which was held by Qian, the CPS said it had launched a civil recovery investigation that “could result” in its forfeiture, but gave no timescale.
If UK authorities determined that no one else was entitled to the assets, half of the forfeited funds would usually go to the police and the other half to the Home Office.
The Metropolitan Police did not respond to a request for comment, but said in March that Chinese authorities had not yet asked to have the money returned.
The victim group hopes the UK will start taking applications for the return of money to individuals based on evidence that they have provided to Chinese local authorities.
A task force on the fraud, led by authorities in the city of Tianjin where the company was based, has made two payments since last May to victims who enrolled with Chinese police, according to four people who lost money in the scam.
They said 8 per cent and 5 per cent of their investment capital had been repaid using assets confiscated from Lantian Gerui and its former employees that were worth a total Rmb2.8bn (£309mn).
A local branch of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the country’s largest lender, is assisting the Chinese refund process and has put the number of people who invested in the fraudulent scheme at 207,000.
The victim group’s letter said they had “suffered extremely serious economic losses, resulting in family breakdown, separation from their children, indebtedness and no money for medical treatment”.
“Our voices . . . should be heard and this property should not be confiscated by the UK,” said a child of one of the victims, who asked not to be named.
She said her mother had invested Rmb25mn in a Lantian Gerui product after being taken on a luxury cruise to Japan by the company’s sales team, but had received dividends amounting to less than half the investment and only Rmb1.6mn from the Chinese task force.
The Chinese embassy in London did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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