Spies, Enemies and the Bitcoin Queen

On 29 September 2025, Qian Zhimin, a 47-year-old Chinese national, pleaded guilty at Southwark Crown Court to multiple counts of acquiring and possessing criminal property. The property in question was eye-catching: more than £5.5 billion worth of Bitcoin. It is thought to be the largest single cryptocurrency seizure ever; the press, with some inevitability, have bestowed upon Qian the moniker, ‘The Bitcoin Queen’.

The underlying fraud, which took place in China between 2014 and 2017, was a rather pedestrian affair: a rudimentary con of persuading approximately 130,000 elderly victims to invest in an exotic sounding scheme with the promise of enormous, guaranteed returns. This was combined with the unremarkable ruse of encouraging investors to persuade others to follow suit, with the lure of further free investments given in exchange for referrals. So far, so pyramid. But then the case becomes interesting – for two reasons.

The first relates to what Qian did next. Having fled to England in 2018, settling in leafy Hampstead, Qian embarked upon her money laundering effort by buying Bitcoin with her ill-gotten gains. Qian’s investment proved to be Buffetesque: by 2025, the Bitcoin had soared in value to the £5.5 billion figure that has made headlines. In parallel to the criminal proceedings against her, the haul has been the subject of litigation brought by Qian’s victims who – unpersuaded by the CPS’s original intention to seek a civil recovery order – have gone to the High Court to secure their compensation. Last week, the High Court heard that the Director of Public Prosecutions, Stephen Parkinson, has proposed establishing a bespoke compensation scheme for the victims.

The Financial Times has reported that this scheme could allow the Treasury to retain much of the £5.5 billion. However, lawyers acting for Qian’s victims say none of the Bitcoin belongs to the UK government: they want the inflated pie to be sliced up between the victims. This goes well beyond what the criminal jurisdiction would consider to be compensatory – where compensation orders are designed to make good loss, damage or injury – but, in the circumstances, who could blame them for pursuing the claim? It might well be the best investment they ever make.

The second reason Qian’s case is of interest relates to the other trial that has been occupying the DPP over the last month. A fortnight before Qian’s guilty plea, over at the Central Criminal Court, the prosecution of Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry for offences under section 1 of the Official Secrets Act 1911 was discontinued. The CPS had determined that there was no longer sufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction. In the furore that has ensued – and, at the time of writing, continues – the DPP has explained this was because the witness statements provided by the Deputy National Security Adviser did not set out, in terms, that at the time of the alleged offences China represented a threat to national security. The CPS proceeded on the basis that this was a necessary ingredient to prove a state was an ‘enemy’ for the purposes of an offence under section 1 of the 1911 Act, following the Court of Appeal’s judgment in R v Ivanova, Roussev & Ors [2024] EWCA Crim 808 [§61].

Those witness statements have now been published. One of the DPP’s predecessors – not the one who now lives at 10 Downing Street, but Lord Ken Macdonald KC – has expressed the view that the contents of those statements, and the facts of the prosecution case, were sufficient for a jury to find that China represented such a threat. Meanwhile, the Director General of MI5, Sir Ken McCallum, has said that Chinese state actors present a national security threat to the UK every day.

It is in this context that the press release that followed Qian’s guilty pleas, as authored by the Head of the Metropolitan Police’s Economic and Cybercrime Command, makes for intriguing reading. It said:

“Through a meticulous investigation and unprecedented cooperation with Chinese law enforcement, we were able to obtain compelling evidence of the criminal origins of the cryptoassets Qian attempted to launder in the UK.“

As the UK embarks upon its first trade talks with China in seven years, at the same time as the hostile activities of the Chinese state are being more readily acknowledged, one might wonder whether this ‘unprecedented cooperation’ will be seen again. On one view, it may well be possible to cooperate with Chinese law enforcement agencies to achieve the common goal of tackling economic crime, particularly when the economies of the UK and China are set to become even more intertwined. But, in doing so, what information might prosecutors have to disclose to a country that presents the biggest state-based threat to the UK’s economic security? Can investigative techniques be shared with the law enforcement agencies of a country whose state actors routinely seek to circumvent them? And when the conviction of an individual depends on evidence provided by a hostile state, can it really be safe?

With friends like these, who needs enemies?