Former Mt. Gox CEO Karpeles Declares Innocence in Final Argument

The former CEO of now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox, Mark Karpeles, claimed his innocence as the trial nears its end.

Mark Karpeles — the former CEO of now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox — has affirmed that he is not guilty in the final argument for his trial, Cointelegraph Japan reports Dec. 27.

In court in Tokyo on Thursday, Karpeles apologized for not being able to avoid his exchange being hacked, but also reiterated the idea that he is innocent. As Cointelegraph Japan reported, in July, he declared that he treated the subtracted money “as a loan from the company,” and that he was going to settle later.

Mark Karpeles has been charged with embezzlement of approximately 340 million yen (about $3 million) from the exchange and manipulating its data to inflate its cash balance. Karpeles allegedly transferred 340 million yen belonging to customers from a Mt. Gox account to his personal account between September and December 2013.

As Cointelegraph recently reported, prosecutors asked for a ten-year prison sentence for Karpeles, who is currently facing the charges in Japan. During his trial, Karpeles has repeatedly denied having stolen money or manipulated Mt. Gox ledgers.

According to today’s report, the ruling for Karpeles’ trial is set to be delivered on March 15, 2019.

Nobuaki Kobayashi, the trustee of Mt.Gox, released a statement in September in which he claims to have liquidated almost 26 billion yen (about $230 million) in Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) in around four months.

In the document, he informed the public that since the third quarter of 2017 he sold 24,658 BTC and 25,331 BCH.