@Zhou How do you in all seriousness propose to return the remaining 40.000?
I had a conversation via email with Zhou earlier this week and this is what he told me:
I'm willing to personally commit the liability after the liquidation is done for the shortfall of funds, paid back from the profits in my future businesses.
It is nice of Zhou to suggest this but I don't think it is very practical, nor would it be ethical for creditors to accept Zhou's money if he really is innocent. Is anyone going after Chen?
Honestly, this sounds like an attempt to avoid being named in any lawsuits related to the collapse of Bitcoinica and/or being pursued by a liquidator for the recovery of funds. In theory, creditors whose combined claims total 75% of the total owed can accept payment arrangements
but it's really,
really unlikely that a liquidator is going to ignore the criminal aspect of Bitcoinica's failure.
Liquidators have some discretion, but it's not absolute and any liquidator who did not seek Zhou's active co-operation in providing information about Chen would be taking a substantial risk - liquidators have legal liability for the manner in which they administer insolvent estates. In this particular case, I think there's zero chance that a liquidator is going to be able to avoid investigating the issues of personal liability of those connected with Bitcoinica and their connections to any criminal activity - there'd be a flurry of complaints to the Registrar of the Insolvency and Trustee Service if that happened and a very real possibility that the private liquidator would be replaced by the Official Assignee.
No-one can "go after Chen" unless Zhou is willing to provide all the information he has about Chen in order for that line of enquiry to be pursued.
#4 is a bullshit answer. There is no reason whatsoever why Zhou's "friend's" funds on AurumXchange should be released to Bitcoinica. Zhou's just using that argument to get people to pressure AurumXchange to release the funds
without them verifying the true source and legitimacy of the funds. According to Zhou, it's the $5,000 AurumXchange transaction which is Chen's, not the $40,000 one.
There is
zero reason for Chen not to pay the remaining $40,000 to Patrick Murck other than Zhou's desire to use that money as leverage for getting the AurumXchange account unlocked. That he's doing so strongly suggests that he's
unable to prove the source and origin of the AurumXchange funds - otherwise he'd have done so by now and the funds would have either been paid to Bitcoinica or returned to Zhou's "friend".
Zhou always wants to come out of every shit-storm looking like a hero. It's probably not going to happen this time because it's not just this community who'll be judging his role in the fall of Bitcoinica.