Difficult to trace money flow on blockchain in Shark Binh case

Mr. Nguyen Hoa Binh at the police station. Photo: Hanoi City Police.

On the afternoon of October 14, Mr. Nguyen Hoa Binh (Shark Binh) and 9 accomplices were prosecuted and detained to investigate the act of fraud and appropriation of assets related to the AntEx cryptocurrency project. The total amount of money appropriated is estimated at about 117 billion VND , converted from the capital contributions of about 30,000 investor wallet addresses.

During the investigation, ChainTracer, a project to warn, trace and support the verification of cases of fraud, cheating or signs of law violations on the blockchain network developed by the Vietnam Blockchain and Digital Asset Association (VBA), coordinated with the authorities in tracing and verifying data.

Mr. Tran Huyen Dinh, Head of ChainTracer project, said that the process of analyzing, tracing and modeling the entire cash flow on the blockchain helps authorities identify token movements between wallets, exchanges and related addresses.

However, according to a representative of ChainTracer, tracing the money flow related to the AntEx cryptocurrency project is not easy. The biggest difficulty currently is the lack of cooperation from some international exchanges, even though the Vietnamese police have officially requested cooperation.

“Some international exchanges such as Gate and MEXC did not respond or provide data in a timely manner, causing difficulties in identifying and tracing the final beneficiaries,” Mr. Dinh revealed.

Based on the investigation documents, the Hanoi City Police Investigation Agency has issued a decision to prosecute the case and prosecute Nguyen Hoa Binh (Shark Binh) and 9 other subjects for the crime of "Fraudulent appropriation of property" prescribed in Article 174 of the Penal Code and the crime of "Violating accounting regulations causing serious consequences" prescribed in Article 221 of the Penal Code.

The prosecution of Shark Binh took place just over a week after the police repeatedly appeared at the building at 18 Tam Trinh Street (Hanoi), the headquarters of NextTech Company. On the evening of October 7, dozens of boxes of documents were sealed and sent away to serve the investigation.

AntEx launched in September 2021, attracting attention when Shark Binh announced that he would invest 2.5 million USD into the project through the Next100 Blockchain fund and take on the role of "strategic advisor". The project was introduced as a comprehensive DeFi ecosystem, developing a stablecoin VNDT pegged to the value of the Vietnamese Dong. However, after listing, the ANTEX token lost up to 99% of its value, causing many investors to suffer heavy losses.

Source: https://znews.vn/nhieu-san-quoc-te-tu-choi-cung-cap-du-lieu-vu-antex-post1593637.html