Bitcoin investors living in Canada filed a class action lawsuit against Mt. Gox and Mizuho Bank Ltd in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, Reuters reported.
According to the court filing, the case was lodged on behalf of "all persons in Canada who paid a fee to Mt. Gox to buy, sell or otherwise trade bitcoins." It also covered those who had their digital currencies stored with the platform on February 7, the report said.
Mt. Gox was the Bitcoin exchange that closed down on February 25, preventing users from accessing their funds. The lawsuit said an estimated 750,000 bitcoins of the users valued at over $400 million were lost. It claimed that a breach on the exchange's security caused "the pilfering of millions of dollars' worth of its' users' bitcoins," the report said.
The lawsuit included Mizuho Bank, one of the biggest lenders in Japan, because "all non-bitcoin currency received by the Mt. Gox Defendants from its users was held in an account or accounts" in the said bank.
A CBCNews report on the matter interviewed Toronto litigation lawyer Ted Charney who said that Mt. Gox did not provide any accounting on the non-Bitcoin currency it had in its keeping nor did it say what had become of the funds that were supposed to be held in trust. He told CBCNews in an interview, "We're never going to find out what's going on unless we start a lawsuit because it's the only way we're going to get access to the records. It's really the only way to get the thing going."
Days ago, Mt. Gox already filed for a Chapter 15 bankruptcy protection in the US, which essentially safeguards them from lawsuits that will be filed in courts in the US. Lawyers of Mt. Gox in the US claimed that they needed the protection offered by bankruptcy to prevent the damage that would arise from a proposed class action lodged in Chicago and another breach of contract suit filed in Seattle, CBCNews reported.
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