Tokyo bitcoin exchange boss pleads not guilty to embez-

DEFUNCT Mt Gox chief executive Mark Karpeles yesterday pleaded not guilty to charges relating to the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of bitcoins and cash from what was once the world’s biggest bitcoin exchange.

The 32-year old French national filed the plea in response to charges of embezzlement and data manipulation at the Tokyo District Court, according to a pool report for foreign journalists.

Mt Gox once handled 80 percent of the world’s bitcoin trades, but filed for bankruptcy in 2014 after losing some 850 000 bitcoins – then worth around half a billion US dollars – and $28 million (R375.3m) in cash from its bank accounts.

In its bankruptcy filing, Tokyo-based Mt Gox blamed hackers for the lost bitcoins, pointing to a software security flaw.

Mt Gox subsequently said it had found 200 000 of the missing bitcoins.

Indicted

Karpeles was indicted for transferring ¥341m yen (R40.04m) from a Mt Gox account holding customer funds to an account in his name during September to December 2013. The prosecution also alleged Karpeles boosted the balance of an account in his name in Mt Gox’s trading system.

In its opening statement to the court, Karpeles’ defence team did not dispute that the transfers took place, but denied they amounted to embezzlement.

Karpeles told the court he was an information technology engineer.

“I swear to God that I am innocent,” he said in Japanese to the three-judge panel hearing his case, according to the pool report.

The collapse of Mt Gox badly damaged the image of virtual currencies, particularly among risk-averse Japanese investors and corpor-