Fed up Ottawa residents win secret suit to freeze the crypto wallets funding Canada’s ‘Freedom Convoy’ protesters
Yesterday, a group of Ottawa residents won a private class action lawsuit to freeze at least 146 cryptocurrency wallets and bank assets tied to the main organizers of Canada’s “Freedom Convoy” in a bid to stanch funding for the ongoing demonstrations.
Known as a Mareva injunction, the lawsuit was filed by Ottawa residents Zexi Li, Geoffrey Devaney, and the Happy Goat Coffee business against key convoy organizers including Chris Barber, Benjamin Dichter, Tamara Lich, and Nicholas St. Louis. The hearing was held in private without public notice or access, lawyer Paul Champ who represents the residents bringing the suit, told The Star, a Toronto-headquartered Canadian newspaper. Li earlier this month won an injunction which barred protesters from honking their horns in downtown Ottawa.
The suit is unprecedented for the country, as it’s the “first time in Canada that a Mareva injunction [has] ever been used to freeze cryptocurrency,” says Matthew Burgoyne, a crypto- and blockchain-focused partner at Calgary-based McLeod Law. He added that the injunction was a powerful legal “remedy which can have significant consequences for a defendant.” The defendants weren’t given advance notice of the suit, says Champ.
Champ, who hired a private investigator and cryptocurrency expert, found that the organizers’ crypto movements outpaced the government’s attempts to track them, according to The Star.
Under the injunction, the named defendants, and those affiliated with them, are restricted from moving fiat and cryptocurrency assets in the bank accounts and cryptocurrency wallets specifically named in the suit. The respondents must now respond to the court and “submit to an examination under oath” regarding their assets and what the assets have been used for. The Mareva injunction is only used when there’s a “high risk” that the defendant will “dispose, encumber or…remove its assets from the jurisdiction during the course of litigation,” says Burgoyne. It effectively freezes their assets until judgment is passed.
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