Miner setback:
bitcoin creator
must hand over
half of fortune
By Hasan Chowdhury
THE Australian who claims to have
invented bitcoin a decade ago has been
asked to surrender more than £3.4 bil-
lion worth of the digital currency to the
estate of his former business associate.
Craig Wright, 49, was sued for more
than $10 billion (£8.2 billion) by the
estate of the late David Kleiman for a
share of his bitcoin earnings.
The lawsuit claims that Mr Wright
mined bitcoins with Kleiman, a para-
lysed coder who died in 2013, in the
early days of the currency.
Following his death, Kleiman’s estate
claims Mr Wright “perpetrated a
scheme” to “seize David’s bitcoins”. Mr
Wright denies there was a partnership.
Judge Bruce Reinhart, in West Palm
Beach, Florida, ruled this week that
Kleiman owned half of the bitcoins that
Mr Wright mined until 2013 and half of
all intellectual property he created, ac-
cording to a court transcript.
That would give title to more than
410,000 bitcoins to Kleiman’s estate,
with one bitcoin currently being worth
£8,327 – a total sum of £3.4 billion.
The ultimate test may be whether
Mr Wright is actually able to deliver the
bitcoins. In his testimony, he said he
did not know where all the bitcoins
were stored, and may not even be able
to access them. Judge Reinhart said he
did not believe that Mr Wright did not
know where all the bitcoins were, call-
ing his testimony “perjurious”.
The case was expected to shed light
on whether Mr Wright is actually Sa-
toshi Nakamoto, the pseudonym used
by the anonymous creator of bitcoin.
“I am not required to decide, and I
do not decide, whether Dr Wright is Sa-
toshi Nakamoto,” the judge said. Judge
Reinhart did not end the case, ruling
that Mr Wright can fight the lawsuit.
Greta hits dry land
after Atlantic crossing
By Ben Riley-Smith US EDITOR
GRETA THUNBERG, the 16-year-old
Swedish climate activist, has arrived in
New York after crossing the Atlantic in
a boat to attend a conference on global
warming.
Greta tweeted a photograph of the
US coast with the words: “Land! The
lights of Long Island and New York
City ahead.”
She later said the boat that carried
her, the Malizia II, had anchored off
Coney Island, a neighbourhood in New
York’s Brooklyn district, and that she
had cleared customs.
The teenager decided not to make
the journey by plane to avoid the hefty
carbon emissions. The sailboat’s on-
board electronics are powered by solar
panels and underwater turbines for a
zero-emissions crossing.
Taking turns steering the 60ft racing
yacht were co-skippers Boris Her-
rmann and Pierre Casiraghi, the grand-
son of the late Prince Rainier III and
Princess Grace of Monaco. The boat
launched from Plymouth, Devon, and
the journey lasted two weeks.
Greta has become a symbol of a
growing movement of young climate
activists and is in New York to attend a
global warming conference.
Action against climate change was a
theme of weekly protests she has led in
Sweden that inspired student strikes in
about 100 cities worldwide.
Greta attracted international atten-
tion last year when she refused to go to
school in the weeks before Sweden’s
general election to highlight the im-
pact of climate change.
She then continued her school strike
on Fridays after the election, spurring
thousands of other young people to fol-
low suit.
Since then, she has met the Pope,
spoken at the World Economic Forum
in Davos and attended anti-coal pro-
tests in Germany.
She is now taking a year off school to
pursue her activism.Sacklers ‘pay $3 billion cost of opioid crisis’
By Rozina Sabur IN WASHINGTON
THE Sackler family will reportedly give
up ownership of Purdue Pharma and
pay $3 billion (£2.4 billion) of their own
money under a tentative agreement to
settle a string of lawsuits accusing the
firm of fuelling the US’s opioid crisis.
The family, which was estimated in
March to be worth $13 billion, is re-
ported to be considering the court set-
tlement which could reach as much as
$12 billion in total.
Under the terms of the agreement,
Purdue Pharma would reportedly file
for bankruptcy and become a public
beneficiary trust that would provide
addiction treatment drugs to the public
at no cost. It would also mean the prof-
its from all drug sales, including opioid
painkillers, would go to the plaintiffs.
The settlement would bring an end
to thousands of lawsuits against Pur-due Pharma, whose prescription pain-
killer OxyContin is blamed for much of
the US opioid addiction epidemic.
The Sacklers, who would no longer
be involved with the company, would
also personally contribute $3 billion to
the settlement and a further $1.5 billion
from the sale of another drug company
they own, Mundipharma.
Around 10 US states are involved in
the negotiation agreement but it re-
mains unclear whether several others
that have lawsuits pending would
agree to be bound by the agreement.
If the settlement is agreed, Purduewould become a beneficiary trust with
an independent board of directors in-
stalled to take charge of the company’s
ongoing business operations and reve-
nues. It would be the first major settle-
ment from the pharma industry.
Several other companies, including
Johnson & Johnson, face claims that
they contributed to the crisis, which
has claimed more than 400,000 lives
in the past two decades.
Details of the talks with the Sacklers
were first reported by NBC News.
Responding to media leaks around
the agreement, Purdue Pharma saidthat while it was “prepared to defend
itself vigorously in the opioid litigation,
the company has made clear that it sees
little good coming from years of waste-
ful litigation and appeals”.
“The people and communities af-
fected by the opioid crisis need help
now,” the company said in a statement.
The company, founded by three
Sackler brothers in the Fifties, has been
criticised for fuelling the US’s opioid
addiction crisis by aggressive promo-
tion of OxyContin since it introduced
the highly addictive painkiller in 1996.
In 2007, Purdue and three top execu-tives pleaded guilty to misleading reg-
ulators, doctors and patients about the
drug’s risk of addiction and its poten-
tial to be abused. Despite paying a
$600 million fine, it continued its ag-
gressive promotion of the drug, playing
down its risk and overstating benefits.
In recent months, a number of cul-
tural institutions have distanced them-
selves from the Sacklers, once
celebrated as global philanthropists.
The Tate Modern in London and
New York’s Guggenheim Museum and
the Metropolitan Museum of Art are all
stopping donations from the family.US philanthropist family
expected to have to give up
the ownership of drug firm
in deal to settle lawsuits
The Force is strong with this one It may be a significant step forward in the space race, but as SpaceX’s Mars starship prototype, Starhopper, flew 500ft over
its Texas launch pad during a successful test flight, observers were more struck by its likeness to the Star Wars droid, R2-D2.REUTERSRoad rage rhino Kusini, a 30-year-old rhino, flipped a
keeper’s car three times during an attack at a Hodenhagen,
Germany, safari park. The worker suffered minor injuries.World news
Kashmir autonomy case
taken to Supreme Court
India’s Supreme Court said yesterday it
will hear challenges in October to a
government order revoking the
autonomy of contested Kashmir.
It also allowed an opposition
politician to visit the region that has
been under lockdown for weeks.
Several petitions have been filed in
the court questioning the legality of
removing Kashmir’s special status,
which the government said was to
help develop the region at the heart of
animosity with Pakistan for decades.WORLD BULLETIN
Racer killed trying to be
fastest woman on Earth
Jessi Combs, the racing car driver and
host of the television series All Girls
Garage, was killed in a high-speed
crash while trying to set a new
land-speed record, her family said
yesterday.
Combs, 36, was attempting to
become the fastest woman on Earth
when she was killed while racing on
the Alvord Desert, a dry lake bed in
south-eastern Oregon, the family said.
The details of the crash were not
released.At least 25 die in arson
attack on Mexican bar
At least 25 people were killed in an
arson attack by suspected gang
members on a bar in the south-eastern
Mexican port of Coatzacoalcos late on
Tuesday, Andrés Manuel López
Obrador, the president, said.
Mr López Obrador told a morning
news conference yesterday that the
deaths occurred after the suspected
gangsters closed the emergency exits.
The attorney general’s office of the
state of Veracruz said that 13 people
were seriously wounded.Ex-Malaysian PM ‘stole
£440m from state fund’
Najib Razak, Malaysia’s ex-prime
minister, played a pivotal role in
plundering the state fund, 1MDB, and
hundreds of millions of dollars were
illicitly channelled to his bank
account, a prosecutor told the opening
of his graft trial yesterday.
Najib faces 21 counts of money-
laundering and four of abuse of power,
centring on allegations that he obtained
2.28 billion ringgit (£440 million). He
denies the charges. It is claimed that
Najib and his cronies spent the money
on real estate and artwork.The Daily Telegraph Thursday 29 August 2019 *** 17
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