A bold cyber theft of $14.2 million has triggered a strange legal battle between one of Canada’s largest banks, Canadian Western Bank, and one of the country’s leading cryptocurrency platforms, Aquanow.
Nearly three months after hackers transferred millions from Canadian Western Bank’s payable accounts system, a judge of the Supreme Court of British Columbia unfroze this week the accounts belonging to Aquanow, the Vancouver-based digital platform used by the thieves to convert the money into Bitcoin. The ruling comes after unusual and highly secretive proceedings, which the Canadian Western Bank’s lawyer argued at one point would have been better kept confidential to prevent “these types of frauds from being accessible and inspiring others to attempt similar acts.”