It doesn’t seem to be very widely known for some reason, but the Karpeles criminal trial has been set for 11th July 2017 at the Tokyo District Court. Yes, that’s 2 weeks from now! There has been a lot of confusion over why the charges which have been brought so far only seem to cover a subset of the suspected illegal activities at MtGox. For example, there are no charges of fraud or of violation of the Banking Act. Now that the trial date has been set, we can assume there are no other charges intended to be brought. This is a very significant point and we’ll be covering it in more detail later.

I’ll be attending the trial at least for the beginning. It would be good to see other creditors turn up. It will of course be in Japanese and I will be taking a lawyer/translator to help.

The courtroom is likely to be full up. There will be a lottery for places held on the day if too many people turn up. Do creditors have a right to a priority place? We have been advised by the prosecutor that individual creditors will not qualify for reserved places, but if they make a group request via a lawyer then it might be possible. Therefore if anyone wishes to attend please contact us and we will try to arrange it.

There will be a lot of people wanting to know what happens at the trial. So far, everything related to the investigation and charges has been almost completely opaque to the outside world. In the interests of justice we believe it’s absolutely vital that the trial is as transparent and accessible as possible. Therefore we have a plan to appoint someone to go to the court to monitor it on a permanent basis. More on this later.