Tony Hetherington is Financial Mail on Sunday’s ace investigator, fighting readers corners, revealing the truth that lies behind closed doors and winning victories for those who have been left out-of-pocket. Find out how to contact him below.
Two bosses of what is said to be a multi-billion-pound cryptocurrency business are set to appear in court ten days from now in a rare prosecution brought by Companies House. Nicolas Cary and Alasdair Turnbull are the directors of Blockchain Access UK Ltd, which officials say has filed no accounts since those for the calendar year 2020.
Cary was one of the founders of the Blockchain.com group in 2011. Originally a small outfit in York, its international headquarters is now in Luxembourg. It claims to handle one third of bitcoin network deals and to have created 91 million cryptocurrency wallets. In 2023 it raised additional funding of US$110 million (about £90 million), valuing the group overall at £5 billion.
In 2020, Blockchain Access UK applied for authorisation from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) under new anti-money laundering regulations, but talks with the regulator broke down. It explained: ‘In 2021, in consultation with the FCA, the company withdrew its application with the FCA given the FCA’s then position on international crypto asset exchange providers. Accordingly, the group restructured its operations and realigned business activities to subsidiaries abroad.’
Blockchain directors say the failure to produce legally due accounts since then is largely because of ‘the need to restructure the wider group’s business model as a result of the Financial Conduct Authority’s implementation of certain key regulations that were unforeseeable by the company.’
Much of its activities that were carried out in Britain have moved overseas – outside FCA control and supervision.
In the line of fire: Blockchain director Nicolas Cary was one of the founders of the group in 2011
The company’s 2020 accounts should have been filed by September 2021, but were not submitted to Companies House until last October. Despite declaring revenue of around £335 million, the business showed an overall loss of £5.4 million.
Questions still hang over the identity of whoever actually controls the crypto trader. Until last August, 75 per cent of shares in the business were registered to a private holding company in the Cayman Islands, with the remaining 25 per cent held by a USA investor. Company records now show that both shareholders ceased to have a controlling interest in the UK business, and that no other firm or person has a significant stake.
In the volatile ‘Wild West’ world of cryptocurrency investment, reputation and reliability are everything.
But in addition to the prosecution of its directors, a check of court records by The Mail on Sunday has found three outstanding county court judgments against Blockchain Access UK itself. One debt is for just £169, while the others are for £1,545 and £1,655. The company did not comment or explain these debts.
Ironically, its director Alasdair Turnbull is a solicitor who once ran a controversial debt collection business in Wimbledon in south-west London.
In 2009, I reported that Turnbull’s company, HFO Services Ltd, had taken an unauthorised £283 from the debit card of a woman whose son it claimed was a debtor.
When she protested, she was told to get her money back from her son. Turnbull refunded the money when The Mail on Sunday intervened.
In a separate incident in the same year, we reported how HFO Services and its law firm Turnbull Rutherford were harassing a woman over debts said to be owed by her neighbour.
She was told that to stop repeated calls from the debt collectors, she had to pressure her neighbour into calling the lawyers. Alasdair Turnbull failed to respond to invitations to comment on his Blockchain company’s debts or its failure to file legally due accounts. If convicted, the penalty for this is an unlimited fine.
A spokesman for the crypto company said: ‘Blockchain.com takes our compliance with licence and regulatory requirements worldwide seriously. We have sorted all necessary documents related to this entirely administrative matter and are confident it will be closed quickly.’
And in an announcement last Tuesday to Blockchain’s users outside the UK – but from which UK users were barred by its website – the firm dismissed the seriousness of the prosecution, citing 2023 figures.
It said: ‘Over 60 per cent of cases brought in that timeframe were dropped or delayed, showing a pattern of Companies House pursuing these matters by default with a broad brush, even when they lack legal merit or public interest and without taking into account a company’s circumstances which may very well justify the delay.
‘In successful cases, a ‘conviction’ is considered minor within the UK’s legal framework, meaning fines are minimal, there’s no risk of imprisonment, it is not recorded on the Police National Computer, and it is automatically expunged after 12 months.
‘Having addressed this entirely administrative matter, we expect the case will come to a close, just as many similar cases have before.’
If you believe you are the victim of financial wrongdoing, write to Tony Hetherington at Financial Mail, 9 Derry Street, London W8 5HY or email [email protected]. Because of the high volume of enquiries, personal replies cannot be given. Please send only copies of original documents, which we regret cannot be returned.
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