Mark Karpeles the CEO of Mt. Gox has been ordered to be present for the Hearing on 17th April. The hearing is scheduled to take place in Texas, US. However, it is unlikely that Mr. Karpeles would turn up and a company representative will attend the hearing. The company representative could be Gonzague, who is the only native English speaker in the organization.
Allegations
Mt Gox earlier announced that it has lost 750,000 Bitcoins due to hack/issues with the Bitcoin Protocol. A class action lawsuit was filed against the firm and Mark Karpeles for alleged fraud and cheating. The court wanted to hear from the CEO why they lost the customer funds and how they are going to compensate the users.
There are a number of other allegations as well. If he gives himself in, the FBI could question regarding his alleged involvement in illegal drug website Silkroad. A friend of Mark, Charlie Shrem was earlier arrested for money-laundering associated with the Silk Road. The company also is said to have breached the contract with Coinlab, which has sued Mt. Gox for $75 million losses.
No way out
Mt. Gox is set to send a company representative to the court and hope the court accepts the representative to be part of the hearing. They must be trying to explain the court that they are still working and Japanese court has given the extension to produce the results. Mt. Gox should be well aware how a US court’s work and if they cannot prove that the coins were in fact lost through Protocol/Hack issue Mark Karpeles will be under a lot of trouble.
Summary
If the court re-orders Mark Karpeles to be available to the court, or it does not accept the explanation given by the representative, an arrest will be on the cards. Being put in such a scenario, we hope MT Fox will be able to come out of whatever they were doing and give all the Bitcoins back to the users. There is almost no way the company has lost all the funds and they should be hiding them somewhere. It is the time for Mt Gox to speak up and explain what actually happened.