Clayton Utz dropped bitcoin ‘creator’ over document integrity
The letter from Clayton Utz was among thousands filed in a US court dispute with the brother of a now deceased David Kleiman, a former business partner of Dr Wright.
The fight was over 1.1 million bitcoin, now worth almost $120 billion, which is believed to have been mined by Satoshi and owned by him.
The cache has been left untouched since soon after the creation of the cryptocurrency. Ira Kleiman was claiming the bitcoin because, he argued, his brother and Dr Wright had created it together.
Dr Wright was ultimately successful, with the court ruling Kleiman’s estate was not entitled to half the Satoshi stash. However, Satoshi’s identity was never proven at the trial. If Dr Wright had lost, he would have needed to prove he had the bitcoin fortune by transferring half to the Kleimans.
A spokeswoman for Dr Wright said the Clayton Utz agreement was not terminated for the reason the law firm’s letter claimed, “but was entirely to do with matters concerning Ira Kleiman’s litigation”.
However, the Financial Review then pointed out that Mr Sommer’s letter was dated July 6, 2015, while Ira Kleiman did not commence legal action against Dr Wright until February 14, 2018.
The spokeswoman then gave a different response. “Dr Wright and the director of DeMorgan Ltd had several phone conversations with Mr Sommer where he explained his position. The ATO provided a lot of business and revenue to his firm and the firm was conflicted,” she said.
The ATO said it could not comment on individual people or companies due to confidentiality laws. Clayton Utz declined to comment due to client confidentiality.
Also on Friday, the Financial Review revealed a series of allegations about false documents made by the ATO against three now-defunct companies related to Dr Wright.
The Tax Office successfully wound up the companies via the Federal Court in 2017.
The ATO alleged that Dr Wright’s companies “made false or misleading statements” and “we consider the statements arose from the taxpayer’s intentional disregard of taxation law,” the Tax Office said in penalty notices from 2016, uncovered by this masthead. The ATO claims are “emphatically denied” by Dr Wright.