Former Mt. Gox CEO Karpeles Declares Innocence in Final Argument

Published at: Dec. 27, 2018

Mark Karpeles — the former CEO of now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox — has affirmed that he is not guilty in the final argument for his trial, Cointelegraph Japan reports Dec. 27.

In court in Tokyo on Thursday, Karpeles apologized for not being able to avoid his exchange being hacked, but also reiterated the idea that he is innocent. As Cointelegraph Japan reported, in July, he declared that he treated the subtracted money “as a loan from the company,” and that he was going to settle later.

Mark Karpeles has been charged with embezzlement of approximately 340 million yen (about $3 million) from the exchange and manipulating its data to inflate its cash balance. Karpeles allegedly transferred 340 million yen belonging to customers from a Mt. Gox account to his personal account between September and December 2013.

As Cointelegraph recently reported, prosecutors asked for a ten-year prison sentence for Karpeles, who is currently facing the charges in Japan. During his trial, Karpeles has repeatedly denied having stolen money or manipulated Mt. Gox ledgers.

According to today’s report, the ruling for Karpeles’ trial is set to be delivered on March 15, 2019.

Nobuaki Kobayashi, the trustee of Mt.Gox, released a statement in September in which he claims to have liquidated almost 26 billion yen (about $230 million) in Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) in around four months.

In the document, he informed the public that since the third quarter of 2017 he sold 24,658 BTC and 25,331 BCH.

Tags
Related Posts
Mt. Gox Trustee Extends Deadline for Rehabilitation Plan Submission
The trustee of now-defunct Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox has extended the deadline for submission of rehabilitation plans, according to an official announcement published on the company’s website on April 25. Per the announcement, the exchange’s Rehabilitation Trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi filed a motion in a bid to extend the submission deadline of a rehabilitation plan at the Tokyo District Court. On April 24, 2019, the court released an order to extend the deadline to October 28, 2019. The announcement reads: “A large amount of rehabilitation claims that the Rehabilitation Trustee fully or partially disapproved remains undetermined for being subject to …
Bitcoin / April 25, 2019
Report: Prosecutors Drop Appeal Against Mt. Gox CEO’s Embezzlement Acquittal
Japanese prosecutors have reportedly dropped their appeal to the acquittal of former Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles, The Mainichi reports on March 29. On March 15, the CEO of the now defunct Mt. Gox cryptocurrency exchange was acquitted of charges of embezzlement, but was found guilty of tampering with financial records. According to The Mainichi, prosecutors had initially sought to appeal the acquittal on embezzlement charges, but subsequently decided to let the decision stand. Karpeles was reportedly accused of taking 341 million yen ($3 million) of customers’ money in Mt. Gox accounts and spending it on a software developer and …
Bitcoin / March 29, 2019
Mt. Gox CEO Decides to Appeal Conviction on Manipulating Financial Records
Mark Karpeles, former CEO of now-defunct Mt. Gox crypto exchange, has appealed his conviction on charges of manipulating data, The Associated Press (AP) reports on March 29. On March 15, Karpeles was acquitted of charges of embezzlement, but was found guilty of tampering with financial records, with the court stating that he manipulated data to harm his clients, betraying their trust and abusing his engineering skills. The Tokyo District Court reportedly found Karpeles guilty of combining his personal assets with those of the exchange in order to conceal the platform’s losses to hackers. Karpeles reportedly received a two and a …
Bitcoin / March 29, 2019
Creditors of Mt. Gox Bitcoin exchange to vote on draft refund plan
The trustee of hacked, now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox has posted another update on the long-running process of refunding the exchange clients. Nobuaki Kobayashi, a Tokyo attorney appointed to act as civil rehabilitation trustee to manage Mt. Gox’s bankruptcy estate funds, announced Thursday that the Tokyo District Court ordered that “There were no grounds for disapproving the draft rehabilitation plan.” As previously reported, the plan was filed on Dec. 15, 2020. According to the announcement, the court has approved a repayment process schedule that includes a vote by creditors on the proposed refund plan. As part of the process, the …
Bitcoin / Feb. 25, 2021
US Court Denies Ex-Mt. Gox CEO Karpeles’ Motion to Stay Lawsuit Against Him
Former CEO of now-defunct Bitcoin (BTC) exchange Mt. Gox, was denied his motion to stay the United States lawsuit against him in light of rehabilitation proceedings in Japan, fintech news agency FinanceFeeds reported on March 1. On Thursday, Feb. 28, the motion by ex-Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles was reportedly denied by the Illinois Northern District Court judge Gary Feinerman. The court also ruled to extend the deadline to submit responses to any already provided discovery requests to May 15, 2019. Karpeles filed a motion to stay the U.S. case launched by former investors on Monday, Feb. 25. In the …
Bitcoin / March 1, 2019