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Senior executives at a £5bn London-headquartered cryptocurrency business are facing prosecution over the company’s failure to file its accounts on time.
Blockchain.com co-founder and president, Nicolas Cary, and operations executive, Al Turnbull, were issued with a summons by Companies House in May.
The case was heard at Cardiff Magistrates Court on Sept 25 and a further hearing is scheduled for Nov 26, according to court documents seen by The Telegraph.
The cryptocurrency business filed accounts for its business for the year ending 2020 only this month and the legal claims relate to its failure to provide accounts for the year ending Dec 2022.
Founded in 2011 in York, Blockchain.com was one of the first digital currency businesses and has emerged as a leading provider of cryptocurrency wallets and trading services. It was last valued at around $7bn (£5bn) in November 2023, when it raised $110m.
Its wallets are used by tens of millions of people to store and send cryptocurrency and its investors include Baillie Gifford, Google Ventures and billionaire Yuri Milner’s DST Global.
A conviction for failing to file accounts, which is brought against the directors of the business, can result in an unlimited fine.
In its accounts for the year 2020, Blockchain.com said its directors had hired legal advisers and were planning to defend the matter.
The company blamed the late filing on a restructuring of the company and a “significant reduction in the wider group’s workforce” which has “taken a period of time to stabilise”. Blockchain.com employs hundreds of staff around the world.
It added the directors were taking “appropriate steps to remediate the company’s compliance with all statutory annual filing requirements”.
A Companies House spokesman said: “We can confirm we are taking enforcement action, however we are unable to comment further at this time.” Blockchain.com did not respond to requests for comment.
The legal claims come as Companies House steps up enforcement action against businesses for failing to file their accounts.
The government body has become more aggressive amid concerns its register is polluted with bogus directors and fake companies, with filing deadlines repeatedly ignored.
Companies House was granted new powers in March to query, investigate and remove false information from the register, with the body promising a more “robust approach”.
In September, Martin Swain, director of intelligence at Companies House, said: “Where our guidance and support are not enough to encourage users to comply with the law or discourage misuse of our registers, we won’t hesitate to use these new powers available to us.”
Earlier this month, the Financial Times reported that Sanjeev Gupta, the steel magnate, was facing prosecution for allegedly failing to file accounts for more than 70 businesses.
A spokesman for Mr Gupta’s GFG Alliance said it had taken “all reasonable steps to resolve the situation”.
Mr Gupta and other directors at the companies have pleaded not guilty.
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