Mt.Gox Bitcoin exchange CEO charged

Now defunct bitcoin exchange Mt.Gox’s chief executive officer Mark Karpelès has been rearrested and charged with embezzling GBP 1.7 million worth of bitcoin from the collapsed bitcoin exchange by Japanese authorities.

On his arrest earlier this year, it was reported that the alleged fraud led to the collapse of the exchange and damage to the credibility of Bitcoin as a virtual currency.

A spokesman for the Tokyo Police said at the time that the French-born Karpelès was suspected of manipulating data on the exchange’s computer system in 2013 to artificially create about $1 million.

At the same time local police were investigating Karpeles’ possible involvement in the 2014 disappearance of nearly $390 million worth of the virtual currency, at current exchange rates.

Mt.Gox once claimed it handled around 80 percent of global Bitcoin transactions, but the entity filed for bankruptcy protection soon after the reports of missing Bitcoins. The company admitted that it had lost 850,000 coins worth 48 billion yen at the time of the disappearance.

Karpeles later claimed he had found some 200,000 of the lost Bitcoins in a “cold wallet” — a storage device such as a memory stick that is not connected to other computers.

Karpeles denies claims that he manipulated account balances while running the Tokyo-based company saying he was “just a victim”.