QuadrigaCX shut down weeks after its CEO died, leaving 76,000 users out of $163m in cash and cryptocurrencies.
Skepticism around the demise of Canadian cryptocurrency exchange founder Gerald Cotten just won’t go away.
The “questionable circumstances” behind the death of QuadrigaCX’s chief executive last year in India at 30 led lawyers representing customers of the collapsed trading platform to request on Friday that his body be exhumed.
QuadrigaCX shut down in January, weeks after Cotten died while on his honeymoon, leaving some 76,000 users out of pocket for about C$215 million ($163 million) in cash and cryptocurrencies. Odd details surrounding his death and the mystery of what happened to clients’ Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, has fueled speculation and conspiracy theories on internet bulletin boards on whether he’s actually deceased.
That prompted Miller Thomson LLP to write a letter to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, asking that they “conduct an exhumation and post-mortem autopsy on the body of Gerald Cotten to confirm both its identity and the cause of death given the questionable circumstances” and the significant losses of affected users.
The law firm also provided background material of “publicly available information” on the history of Quadriga, Cotten and others tied to the firm that “further highlight the need for certainty around the question of whether Mr. Cotten is in fact deceased,” according to the Dec. 13 letter.
The law firm requests the process be done by spring “given decomposition concerns.”
Cotten died on Dec. 12, 2018 of complications due to Crohn’s disease in Jaipur, India, according to an affidavit from his widow, Jennifer Robertson and a statement of death from the J.A. Snow Funeral Home in Halifax, dated Dec. 12. His company, Quadriga Fintech Solutions Corp., is in the midst of bankruptcy proceedings in Toronto.
SOURCE: Doug Alexander • Bloomberg