Lawyers representing users of the collapsed Quadriga CX cryptocurrency exchange platform are requesting that Canadian authorities exhume and examine the body of its late founder, Gerald Cotten, to check if the person buried there is really him.
Cotten, fellow benefactor and CEO of Quadriga, kicked the bucket of complexities in December 2018 emerging from Crohn’s Disease while going in India, the organization said on Facebook. At the time, Quadriga – when Canada’s greatest cryptographic money trade – said it was not able access his digital assets. Close to $145 million were left solidified in Cotten’s account.
Cotten’s passing dove Quadriga into emergency and left it in the battle of how to discount in excess of 100,000 clients. Quadriga announced that the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia had given a Termination and Bankruptcy Assignment Order mentioning the procedure by which the Quadriga CCAA proceedings would be changed over to bankruptcy proceedues.
Miller Thompson LLP wrote to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on Friday appealing an exhumation and post-mortem on Cotten’s body “to confirm both its identity and the cause of death given the questionable circumstances surrounding Mr. Cotten’s death and the significant losses of Affected Users.” The company confirmed that the letter was authentic.
A significant number of the digital currencies were kept by Quadriga in offline accounts known as “cold wallets,” a method for shielding them from hackers. As per the company, Cotten was the only one to have access to the cold wallets.
In the letter dated Friday, lawyers mentioned “the need for certainty around the question of whether Mr. Cotten is, in fact, deceased.”
