Court Freezes Millions in Canadian Trucker Convoy's Donated Cash and Cryptocurrency

Law.com International interviewed Monique Jilesen for her role in obtaining the first Mareva injunction freezing cryptocurrency in Canada for the benefit of Ottawa class members who are suing for damages against the leaders of the Freedom Convoy.

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Monique Jilesen, a partner at litigation boutique Lenzner Slaght, led the team that filed the Mareva request. She said it was critical to show the judge evidence there was a “risk of dissipation” of themillions of dollars demonstrators have collected through crowdfunding and other sources.

She said there was ample prima facie evidence of that “related primarily to the public discussion of moving things into cryptocurrency and then moving it out of the cryptocurrency into the hands ofthe protesters.”

While a large amount of cryptocurrency is traded on regulated exchanges and is easy to track,some experts say peer-to-peer transactions of cryptocurrency could be hard to prevent. Jilesen said that unlike briefcases of cash, which are almost untraceable, “the movement of the cryptocurrencyfrom wallet to wallet is transparent to the world online.”