Russian Lawyers Claim 200,000 BTC Lost in Mt. Gox Can Be Recovered

Russian law firm Zheleznikov and Partners has proposed legal action that should enable its lawyers to recover up to 200,000 Bitcoin (BTC) lost in the Mt. Gox fiasco.

Recover losses on behalf of Mt. Gox victims

On Sept. 12 in a Q&A with Andy Pag, a former BBC journalist, the Moscow-based law firm outlined its proposal to recover close to $2 billion in BTC on behalf of victims who lost funds when the now-defunct exchange was hacked.

Lawyers of Zheleznikov and Partners believe that, thanks to the close cooperation with law enforcement, they can recover up to 200,000 BTC by taking legal action against Russian nationals who received the stolen money. The legal team pointed out that some of these individuals have already been identified, but added:

“We want to make clear that we do not yet know the identities of all persons. We have strong reasons to believe that their identities will be revealed by the police investigation bringing existing information together, but we hope that once the criminal case starts they will come forward quickly and offer to give compensation to victims.”

Law firm's work won't come cheap

This proposed recovery of the stolen BTC coins doesn’t come cheap, as the law firm wants to charge creditors up to 75% of the recovered sum. However, the company will only accept payment in the event of a successful recovery. 

Mt. Gox has an infamous role in Bitcoin’s history. Once the world's biggest cryptocurrency exchange, it went under in a cloud of confusion and anger. The exchange slowly started to capitulate in February 2014 — ending in the company filing for bankruptcy.

Mt. Gox stated at the time that almost 750,000 BTC belonging to its customers, as well as 100,000 BTC of its own, had been stolen. The total loss constituted around 7% of all Bitcoins available, worth about $473 million at the time.