A trustee’s audit of bankrupt Canadian cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX has discovered that its late founder siphoned millions of dollars from clients, and spent it on himself and his wife.
Court-appointed monitor Ernst & Young said in a report that late QuadrigaCX president Gerald Cotten had transferred the funds from customers’ accounts to other cryptocurrency exchanges and then used the money to buy luxury goods, real estate and travel — and to cover his trading losses.
According to the report, “significant volumes of cryptocurrency were transferred off platform outside Quadriga to competitor exchanges into personal accounts controlled by Mr Cotten.”
“It appears that user cryptocurrency was traded on these exchanges and in some circumstances used as security for a margin trading account established by Mr Cotten,” it said. “In addition, substantial amounts of cryptocurrency were transferred to wallet holders whose identity the monitor has been unable to confirm.”
Cotten’s wife, Jennifer Robertson, had previously said in an affidavit that the company had been unable to access encrypted computers that her late husband was believed to have used to store the cryptocurrencies.
The files, for which Cotten alone had the passwords, were referred to as cold wallets.
Ernst & Young said that it had identified 76,000 QuadrigaCX users that are owed a total of C$215 million (US$163 million), but the firm has been able to recover only C$33 million to date.
Skeptics had suggested Cohen faked his death. The report does not delve into that question, but notes that Cohen had not maintained any proper accounting records over the past three years and transferred large amounts of money without any oversight.
At the same time, he and his wife “acquired significant assets including real [estate] and personal property” and “frequently traveled to multiple vacation destinations often making use of private jet services.”
QuadrigaCX had announced in mid-January that Cotten died of complications from Crohn’s disease on Dec. 9 last year while volunteering at an orphanage in India. He was 30.
A court in February granted his wife’s bankruptcy application on behalf of the company.
When an apartment comes up for rent in Germany’s big cities, hundreds of prospective tenants often queue down the street to view it, but the acute shortage of affordable housing is getting scant attention ahead of today’s snap general election. “Housing is one of the main problems for people, but nobody talks about it, nobody takes it seriously,” said Andreas Ibel, president of Build Europe, an association representing housing developers. Migration and the sluggish economy top the list of voters’ concerns, but analysts say housing policy fails to break through as returns on investment take time to register, making the
‘SILVER LINING’: Although the news caused TSMC to fall on the local market, an analyst said that as tariffs are not set to go into effect until April, there is still time for negotiations US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that he would likely impose tariffs on semiconductor, automobile and pharmaceutical imports of about 25 percent, with an announcement coming as soon as April 2 in a move that would represent a dramatic widening of the US leader’s trade war. “I probably will tell you that on April 2, but it’ll be in the neighborhood of 25 percent,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago club when asked about his plan for auto tariffs. Asked about similar levies on pharmaceutical drugs and semiconductors, the president said that “it’ll be 25 percent and higher, and it’ll
CHIP BOOM: Revenue for the semiconductor industry is set to reach US$1 trillion by 2032, opening up opportunities for the chip pacakging and testing company, it said ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控), the world’s largest provider of outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) services, yesterday launched a new advanced manufacturing facility in Penang, Malaysia, aiming to meet growing demand for emerging technologies such as generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The US$300 million facility is a critical step in expanding ASE’s global footprint, offering an alternative for customers from the US, Europe, Japan, South Korea and China to assemble and test chips outside of Taiwan amid efforts to diversify supply chains. The plant, the company’s fifth in Malaysia, is part of a strategic expansion plan that would more than triple
Taiwanese artificial intelligence (AI) server makers are expected to make major investments in Texas in May after US President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office and amid his rising tariff threats, Taiwan Electrical and Electronic Manufacturers’ Association (TEEMA, 台灣電子電機公會) chairman Richard Lee (李詩欽) said yesterday. The association led a delegation of seven AI server manufacturers to Washington, as well as the US states of California, Texas and New Mexico, to discuss land and tax issues, as Taiwanese firms speed up their production plans in the US with many of them seeing Texas as their top option for investment, Lee said. The
RSS