A new committee appointed by law firms Miller Thomson and Cox & Palmer will provide guidance in representing affected clients of major Canadian cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX. The development was announced in a court notice on March 19.
In the filing, Miller Thompson reveals that it has established the Official Committee of Affected Users of now-shuttered QuadrigaCX, comprising of seven users affected by the shutdown of the trading platform following the sudden death of its co-founder, Gerald Cotten, last December.
At the time, the exchange reported that it was not able to access its cold wallet holdings, as Cotten had purportedly been the sole person with access to wallets’ keys. With the allegedly inaccessible crypto accounting for the vast majority of the exchange’s assets, QuadrigaCX now owes over $198.4 million to an estimated 115,000 users.
The newly formed committee is set to help the law firms represent all affected users in the court proceedings against QuadrigaCX. The committee can reportedly “retain advisors, experts and consultants to provide advice to and to assist the Official Committee of Affected Users and Representative Council in the exercise of their duties in relation to the Purpose.”
The committee members have varying fields of expertise and include such industry players as Eric Bachour, a creditor of now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox, and Magdalena Gronowska, who has advisory experience in economic policy development for the Government of Ontario.
Miller Thomson and Cox & Palmer were appointed as QuadrigaCX’s legal representatives in February by a decision rendered by the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia, Justice Michael Wood. The representative council was set to be responsible for “managing communications with users; acting as user liaison for the monitor [Ernst & Young]; advocating for user interests before the court; identify[ing] potential conflicting interest amongst users; and advocating for user privacy.”
As Cointelegraph reported yesterday, QuadrigaCX’s co-founder Michael Patryn was reportedly involved in multiple criminal activities in the past. Patryn and his partner, Lovie Horner, remain two of QuadrigaCX’s largest shareholders, although he has not had any involvement in the company’s operations since 2016 due to a fundamental disagreement with Cotten.