Hong Kong authorities have on the 23rd of December, attested the former CEO of AAX, Liang Haoming, and the creator of AAX, Thor Chan.
According to local media sources, Hong Kong authorities arrested two executives of the crypto exchange AAX on suspicion of fraud and misleading the police by using “system maintenance” as a ploy to keep clients from withdrawing assets due to liquidity difficulties.
One of the executives is also accused of intentionally misleading law enforcement by lying to them about the timeline of his operations at the organization. The executive’s residences and two AAX bank accounts have frozen. Police believe that a third executive travelled abroad with an AAX wallet and private keys that contained about $30 million in digital assets.
The police have seized his properties in Hong Kong, and authorities are actively collaborating with international investigators to trace the funds as part of the inquiry.
Due to “system maintenance,” the Hong Kong-based platform has been offline since the middle of November, preventing 2 million registered users from accessing their money. Since then, victims in China, Taiwan, Italy, and France have filed over 337 reports with the district police.
On November 14, AAX stopped accepting withdrawals, citing a bug in the exchange’s system upgrade. The company reassured its community that, contrary to reports, the withdrawal freeze had nothing to do with the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX.
Two weeks later, a rumor was circulating that the exchange had deleted its YouTube channel. All of the tutorial and explanatory videos it uploaded since it first started were completely removed. The new development left users concerned about the firm’s silence because they thought it might be experiencing a more serious internal crisis than it lets on.
A few weeks later, the vice president of worldwide marketing and communications at AAX made his resignation known. Ben Caselin announced on Twitter that he had quit the cryptocurrency exchange, explaining that despite his attempts to advocate for the community, his ideas for change had not been adopted.
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