The chief executive of non-operational Mt. Gox was pleaded not culpable this week. The judgment was given against the charges concerning to the huge loss of bitcoins having a value of millions of dollars as well as cash from former biggest bitcoin exchange in the world.
Mark Karpeles registered the plea at the Tokyo District Court in reply to accusations of data manipulation and misuse, as per a report. Mt. Gox formerly managed almost 80% of the bitcoin trades in the world but was registered for liquidation in 2014 after a huge loss of almost 850,000 bitcoins. These bitcoins, at that time, were worth almost half a $ 0.5 Billion. In addition to this, the loss also included $28 Million cash from its Japanese bank accounts.
In its liquidation filing, Mt. Gox, the Tokyo-based company, accused cyber attackers for the loss of bitcoins, highlighting to a flaw in software security. Mt. Gox further claimed that it had discovered 200,000 of the lost bitcoins. Karpeles was accused for shifting $3 Million (341 Million Yen) to an account in his name from a Mt. Gox account holding user money during the time frame of September 2013 to December 2013. He also supposedly heightened the balance of an account in Mt. Gox’s trading system in his name.
Karpeles’ defense had informed in a pre-test discussion that the payment was within the scope of the income of the firm and not the misuse of user money, the local media reported last week. The defense claimed that the elevated balance was a part of the managerial procedure of exchanging bitcoins and cash and consequently not illegal, the local media reported. Karpeles informed the court that he was an Information Technology engineer. “I pledge to God that I am not guilty,” he claimed to the 3-judge board in Japanese who were hearing his case, as per the report.
Well, it seems that the case is not as simple as it looks like. As per Karpeles statement, he is innocent and claims that all the transactions were part of the managerial procedure of exchanging bitcoins and cash. Let us see what the court decides in the future.