A London court ruling could improve the British state's chances of retaining some of the 61,000 bitcoins seized in a multibillion-dollar fraud case involving a Chinese woman jailed in the UK.
Nicknamed the "goddess of wealth", Zhimin Qian was sentenced to almost 12 years in jail by a UK court last year after defrauding around 128,000 people in China between 2014 and 2017.
Qian converted part of the proceeds into bitcoin before fleeing to Britain, where police seized more than 61,000 bitcoins whose value has since surged to around $5 billion.
The High Court in London ruled on Monday that Chinese law, rather than English law, should govern claims to the seized cryptocurrency.
English law would have been more favourable to victims as it would allow them to more easily assert their rights to the bitcoin, according to two sources close to the case.
By making it more difficult to recover the funds, the ruling gives Britain a better chance of retaining some of them, according to one of these sources and a third source.
"Every materially significant element of the alleged fraud, the resulting transactions and the loss sustained by the applicants were centred in China," Judge Mark Turner said in his ruling.
"That puts the focus on the law of the place where the investments were made, and on what happened to investors' money in China," said Jackson Ng, a lawyer representing some of the victims.
The Crown Prosecution Service said a further hearing would be held to determine how the law applies and whether any victims can establish a claim to the funds.
Fieldfisher, the law firm chosen to represent the victims before the court, told AFP it intends to appeal the ruling.
British authorities said in October 2025 that they were considering a compensation scheme for victims, according to Ng.
Britain's finance ministry did not respond to a request to comment from AFP by Tuesday evening.