A recent report by CBC has revealed that a major chunk of crypto donations to Canada’s Freedom Convoy might have evaded seizure. The development is reported a month after the Trudeau-led federal government ordered to freeze the crypto assets under the Emergencies Act.
Missing bitcoins
The report highlighted that the main Convoy account raised 20.7 Bitcoins, but the police have caught hold of only 5.96405398 Bitcoins up until March 18. At the market time, it is a massive difference of around $600,000 at a per token value of $41,000. Additionally, the remaining 70% of wallets have seen major drainage from their original source, cited the report.
Just to reiterate, the so-called Freedom Convoy forms part of trucker demonstrations, protesting against Covid-19 vaccine mandates and pandemic-related restrictions in Ottawa. The protestors carried blockades for around three weeks in Canada.
PM Trudeau had called the protests “illegal” and “dangerous,” before the Canadian authorities shut down online fundraising by the anti-vaxxers. Soon after, the protestors had turned to Bitcoin
before the authorities clamped down their crypto wallets. Another report suggest that at least $1 million in crypto donations remain frozen but BeInCrypto was unable to independently verify the amount.
Mathew Burgoyne, a Calgary-based digital currency lawyer told CBC, “There’s a huge limitation, as we’ve seen, with freeze orders when they relate to cryptocurrency wallets.”
Frozen wallets and what’s next with the injunction order
Additionally, it is worth noting that the self-styled Freedom Convey also reportedly lost a private class-action lawsuit against a group of Ottawa residents in February. The victory allowed an injunction on at least 146 cryptocurrency wallets.
Burgoyne also explained, “The limitation is that the crypto can simply be transferred to another wallet address that’s not frozen, and then another address that’s not frozen, and it can continue to be transferred in an effort to obscure the original source, or in an effort to remove the funds as much as possible from the wallet that was frozen.”
As per local reports, the injunction restricted the convoy from “selling, removing, dissipating, alienating, transferring, assigning” close to $20 million till 31 March.
About the missing amount, Monique Jilesen, a lawyer involved in the civil case against the convoy, told CBC, “I presume, although I don’t know, in part that was done in order to distribute the wallets … they’ve taken one big wallet, moved it into hundreds of smaller wallets, and then they hand the passwords to that smaller wallet to the ultimate recipient.”
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