The news was revealed during the trial of 42-year-old Jian Wen, who is accused of laundering Bitcoin on behalf of her former employer, Zhang Yadi, an alleged fugitive from Beijing authorities.
One of the largest cryptocurrency seizures in the world
It is understood that in 2018, British police seized four separate devices containing more than 61,000 Bitcoins from a safe and a property where Jian Wen and her then-employer Zhang Yadi lived at the time.
When police recovered all the cryptocurrencies in July 2021, the value of Bitcoin totaled approximately £1.4 billion, making it one of the largest cryptocurrency seizures in the world. These Bitcoins were the proceeds of investment fraud committed by Zhang Yadi in China between 2014 and 2017.
Zhang Yadi, whose real name is Qian Zhimin, stole approximately £5 billion ($6.34 billion) from more than 128,000 investors, which she later converted into Bitcoin and arrived in London in 2017 under a false identity. She later fled the UK and remains at large, according to prosecutors.
Jian Wen has not been charged with participating in the fraud. However, she is accused of helping convert some of Zhang's bitcoins into cash, jewelry and other luxury goods, and property while knowing they were proceeds of crime.
British Crown Prosecution Service lawyer Gillian Jones KC said that in 2018, Jian Wen tried to purchase a London property worth 12.5 million pounds on behalf of Zhang Yadi through the Mishcon de Reya law firm. The purchase failed because the law firm could not verify the source of the Bitcoin. .
Jian Wen, who moved to the UK from China in 2007 and became a British citizen in 2018, described herself in court as Zhang Yadi's "carer" and said she believed all of Zhang's bitcoins came from legitimate business activities. But Jones said Jian Wen was a "front stage figure" who was paid to "keep Ms Zhang in the background". "Not only was Wen trusted with the password and a copy of the password to access the laptop (which contained the Bitcoin), but he also had access to the location where the laptop was stored," Jones said.
