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Grant Colthup, the former CEO of cryptocurrency platform Mine Digital which collapsed in 2022, has fronted the Ipswich Magistrates Court in Queensland on a $2.2 million fraud charge stemming from the company’s operations.
Colthup was sole director of ACCE Australia, which traded as Mine Digital – a digital asset exchange platform that offered cryptocurrency trading services to customers between May 2019 and September 2022.
The fraud charge brought by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) against Colthup relate to a transaction that occurred in July 2022, just months before the company was placed into administration in September that year.
ASIC alleges that a customer of Mine Digital paid $2.2 million to ACCE for Bitcoin but never received any cryptocurrency in exchange.
Instead, Colthup is alleged to have “used the funds to pay liabilities of ACCE and/or purchase cryptocurrency for others”.
Colthup appeared in the Ipswich Magistrates Court yesterday with the matter adjourned to 16 December 2024.
Bradley Tonks, of PKF, was appointed liquidator of the Queensland-based company in December 2022 following a creditors' voluntary liquidation of the company.
The Australian Financial Review reported in January last year that Tonks was considering legal action against Colthup with a view to compensating creditors for losses totalling $16 million.
Tonks tells Business News Australia that he has undertaken an extensive investigation of the company’s affairs and kept creditors informed through regular reports, while also filing reports with ASIC as required under the Corporations Act.
Tonks, who says the liquidation process is still under way, has confirmed that ASIC has undertaken its own investigation which has led to the criminal proceedings against Colthup.
“This is an ongoing process and we are still working through it,” he says.
When Mine Digital was launched in 2019, Colthup announced that Mine Digital would “set a new standard in the Australian cryptocurrency market”.
The company noted that it had partnered with Hong Kong-based digital asset and blockchain platform provider BC Group to provide its clients with “insured custody, access to market leading trading solutions, global liquidity and competitive fees”.
“Our longer-term aim is to become a significant contributor in the APAC landscape as we bring more services to market in 2019-20,” said Colthup at the time.
“Many of the leading crypto-to-crypto exchanges originated out of the APAC region, but in terms of compliant/regulated crypto-fiat venues, the region still lags North America and Europe. We want to fill that gap.”
The Mine Digital executive team was said to have been backed by “a first-class advisory board” with the broader team boasting “over 100 years of deep financial market experience covering major asset classes, and most instrument types in global banks and investment banks, insurers, hedge funds and trading firms”.
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