UK court rules Chinese law governs seized $5 billion bitcoin

A London judge ruled on Monday that Chinese law, not English law, decides whether thousands of fraud victims can claim the 61,000 bitcoin (BTC) seized by UK police, pushing the roughly $5 billion haul closer to staying in government hands.

Mr Justice Mark Turner handed down the judgment in the High Court in London on 12 October 2026. The case is a civil recovery claim brought by the Director of Public Prosecutions under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. He found that the governing law "is Chinese law."

What the court decided

The split between Chinese and English law sits at the center of the case. Under English law, bitcoin counts as property, so victims could try to claim the coins themselves and any rise in their value. Chinese courts have generally treated crypto losses as a debt to be repaid, which could limit victims to their original money plus interest. The gap between those two outcomes runs to billions of dollars.

Turner found that the fraud, the payments and the contracts all took place in China. "The relevant damage occurred in China," he wrote. "The Applicants parted with their money in China." Because the coins were bought there, he said, tracing them to England could not revive rights the investors had already lost at home.

He did not decide who owns the coins. Any question about the content and proof of Chinese law is "for a later stage," he wrote. His only next move is to hear lawyers on the form of the order. The fight is not over.

How the UK came to hold 61,000 bitcoin

The hoard came from one of the biggest fraud cases ever tied to crypto. Zhimin Qian ran a group of investment schemes in China between 2014 and 2017, taking money from ordinary savers and moving much of it into bitcoin. At least 128,409 investment contracts were signed, and investors paid in about 40.2 billion yuan, close to £4.1 billion, according to court material cited by Decrypt.

Qian fled China in 2017 and was later arrested in the UK. London's Metropolitan Police seized the devices holding the coins during searches in October and November 2018. In November 2025, Qian pleaded guilty to money laundering and was jailed for 11 years and eight months.

Few people can picture a sum this size. The Financial Times valued the seized coins at about £3.8 billion, or roughly $5 billion, while blockchain analytics firm Arkham put the figure at 61,245 bitcoin. Bitcoin traded near $83,000 on 13 October 2026, according to CoinGecko data cited by Decrypt. At the time of Qian's trial the same coins were worth closer to $7 billion.

About 16,000 Chinese investors have joined the UK proceedings, according to the financial outlet Caixin. Each one must prove a direct claim on the coins, not simply a right to be paid back. That is a high bar.

What to watch

Nothing about the ruling hands the bitcoin to anyone yet. A later stage of the case will test what Chinese law actually says, and whether any victim can show a real interest in the coins. Prosecutors have said victims could still be repaid through a redress scheme run from China. Fieldfisher, the firm leading the individual claimants, told the Financial Times it is seeking an appeal.

Jackson Ng, a partner at Duan & Duan UK LLP, called the judgment "an important decision for the many thousands of Chinese investors who lost money." He added that the court "has held that whether victims retain rights in the frozen bitcoin is to be decided under Chinese law."

There is a reason the outcome matters in Westminster. The Financial Times reported last year that Treasury officials had privately weighed whether the seized bitcoin could help fill a gap in the public finances. A win would be convenient. It would not, by itself, settle who the money belongs to.

Governments are holding more seized crypto than ever. The US recently moved about $1 billion of bitcoin tied to the Bitfinex hack, and US officials have flagged plans to seize around $1 billion in Iran-linked crypto. This UK case is now one of the largest tests of what happens to those coins in the end.