Qian Zhimin Bitcoin Case: High Court Applies Chinese Law

Whether Chinese victims can claim a share of more than 61,000 seized bitcoin will be judged under Chinese law, an English judge ruled on Monday. Mr Justice Turner handed down his decision in the Qian Zhimin Bitcoin case at the High Court in London on October 12, 2026, and the National Archives has published it as [2026] EWHC 2509 (KB). The case is formally titled Director of Public Prosecutions v Zhimin Qian & Anor, and it deals with how victims of a Chinese Ponzi scheme may recover assets now held in England.

What the court had to decide

The question before Mr Justice Turner was narrow. The Director of Public Prosecutions has already secured the assets under proceeds of crime law. Alleged victims have applied under section 281 of the Proceeds of Crime Act to claim an interest in the bitcoin. The judge was asked only which country's law governs those claims, England, China or a mix of the two.

He wrote that no evidence has yet been put forward on what Chinese law says. The hearing therefore relied on a statement of assumed facts agreed by the parties. His conclusion is stated in plain terms, which is that the applicants' claims do not engage English law as the governing law of the rights they rely on.

Paragraph 24 of the judgment, which records the more than 61,000 bitcoin seized. Source: National Archives, Find Case Law.

Facts the judgment records

The agreed facts describe Zhimin Qian as a Chinese national who ran about ten investment schemes in China between 2014 and 2017. They were Ponzi schemes, the document says, designed and carried out in China. At least 128,409 investment contracts were signed, and the known investors were all Chinese nationals living in China.

The judgment quotes a 2021 Tianjin court conviction of an associate. That ruling put the money collected from investors at about 40.2 billion yuan, roughly £4.1 billion. About 34.1 billion yuan was repaid to some victims along the way. Part of the rest became bitcoin through an exchange account, over-the-counter trades and mining machines, all in China, before Qian left the country in July 2017.

She arrived in London in September 2017. The Metropolitan Police searched a London property and a safe deposit box in October and November 2018 and seized devices and keys. The court records that a property freezing order was made in December 2023 and a management receivership order in June 2025.

What it means for the Qian Zhimin Bitcoin case

The ruling does not decide who gets the coins. Paragraph 246 says any proprietary rights behind the victims' claims must be assessed under Chinese law. The content, effect and proof of that law are left for a later stage. The judge also found one of the applicants' four routes unsustainable as a matter of statutory interpretation. He said he would hear counsel on the precise form of order, so the Qian Zhimin Bitcoin case will return to court.

The conclusions section of the judgment. Source: National Archives, Find Case Law.

For scale, Binance's BTC/USDT price was about $83,700 on October 13. At that price, 61,000 coins would be worth roughly $5.1 billion. The judgment gives no valuation of its own, and the figure is only an illustration of the size of the dispute.