UK High Court Considers Applicable Law in Multi-Billion Pound Bitcoin Forfeiture

The English High Court of Justice has initiated proceedings to determine which legal framework governs claims brought by victims seeking to recover billions of pounds worth of seized Bitcoin ¹. The Director of Public Prosecutions recovered the assets under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 after investigating a fraudulent operation orchestrated by Chinese national Zhimin Qian ¹.

According to an agreed statement of assumed facts filed with the court, Qian set up Tianjin Lantian Gerui Electronic Technology Co Limited in March 2014, orchestrating approximately 10 Ponzi schemes that took in 40,228,350,969 Chinese renminbi (roughly £4.1 billion) between 2014 and 2017 ¹. The company, which was never licensed to sell financial products, marketed schemes involving digital currency, insurance services, and purification devices across China ¹. Qian fled China into Myanmar in July 2017 to avoid arrest and entered London in September 2017, where she has lived since ¹. In her basis of plea dated Sept. 29, 2025, Qian conceded that the schemes were unlawful under Chinese law ¹.

Jurisdictional Conflict Over Seized Crypto

The disputed assets consist mostly of $BTC seized by UK authorities, which are now contested by thousands of Chinese investors under Section 281 of the Proceeds of Crime Act ¹. An audit referenced in court documents identified at least 128,409 investment contracts signed in connection with the fraud ¹. The High Court must now decide whether English law, Chinese law, or a hybrid of both applies to adjudicate whether victims hold direct proprietary interests in the recovered funds ¹.

The proceedings represent one of the largest cryptocurrency forfeiture disputes globally, aligning with broader cross-border enforcement efforts documented as regulators claw back millions in crypto fraud and theft cases ¹. Justice Turner noted that no evidence has yet been presented regarding Chinese law or the individual factual basis of each claim, leaving the applicable conflict-of-laws principles as the opening hurdle for the litigation ¹. At the time of writing, $BTC traded at $83,457.