A lawsuit against Mt Gox will be filed by a London law firm and will target Chief Executive Officer Mark Karpeles' bank accounts to recoup lost investment, Coindesk said in a report.
According to Selachii LLP, it will be filing a class-action suit on behalf of more than 200 plaintiffs across China, US, Canada and Europe. The lawfirm also said that it has already engaged its lawyers in Japan to built a case against the embattled virtual money exchange and has plans to go after Mt. Gox's parent company Tibanne, which was also founded by Karpeles.
The report noted that Gregory Greene has already filed a lawsuit against Karpeles and the exchange in Denver, Colorado on Thursday.
Laywer Richard Howlett of Selachii said that the details leading to the closure of the exchange was suspicious, and that the firm will be forcing the court to have Mt Gox and Karpeles prove that there was indeed theft that happened in the exchange. Mt Gox earlier released a statement that the theft of 850,000 Bitcoins, 750,000 of them are owned by investors, had been stolen by hackers.
"I don't know if it's true that they were hacked, no one knows if it's true. but that's something that will come out in court. I will be surprised if it's as simple as they were just hacked. They had to be honest [with their customers]. They should have stopped everything, because it appears that they were in serious financial difficulty." Howlett said, appealing to the exchange to admit that the more obvious reason for their demise was their financial situation.
Hinting that Karpeles might have plundered to increase his wealth, Howlett vowed that his firm is intending to gain all of the CEO's wealth to return the money lost in the exchange to the claimants.
"His bank accounts will be scrutinised, his finances will be scrutinized, any offshore accounts, all those sorts of things - if there's money there, those assets could be pulled into the pot to distribute to the people in the class action," Howlett added.
