Fugitive Christen Ager-Hanssen bankrupted by UK court order

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Christen Ager-Hanssen has been declared bankrupt—again—in the United Kingdom after failing to pay a court-ordered judgment to his former employer, enterprise blockchain technology research firm nChain Holding AG.

On August 19, the Ager-Hanssen Exposed (AHE) site reported that a U.K. court had that same day dismissed Ager-Hanssen’s attempt to bargain for more time to pay the roughly £95,000 debt he owed nChain, which fired him in September 2023 after his failed ‘coup’ attempt against his former employer. [Disclosure: CoinGeek’s owner is an nChain shareholder.]

The judge in the High Court of Justice Business and Property Courts of England and Wales approved the bankruptcy petition that nChain filed against Ager-Hanssen earlier this year. Ager-Hanssen originally asked for the petition to be dismissed, then asked for more time with which to pay, but the judge concluded that this would be pointless as Ager-Hanssen simply didn’t have the cash to pay this debt.

The bankruptcy order means Ager-Hanssen will lose control of all of his U.K. companies—admittedly, most of them worthless shells—and will require the approval of the court before he can once again serve as director of any U.K.-registered firm. But that seems unlikely given that Ager-Hanssen is currently a fugitive from U.K. justice for a related offense.

Ager-Hanssen fled the U.K. months ago to seek refuge in his native Norway after being served with court orders requiring him to return computer equipment and the proprietary data contained therein that nChain said he’d illegally obtained following his botched coup.

True to form, Ager-Hanssen lied to the court regarding his compliance with these requests. In May, the U.K. High Court of Justice’s Kings Bench Division ordered Ager-Hanssen imprisoned for 10 months based on what the court characterized as his “deliberate” breaches of the court orders related to his theft of nChain’s property.

Ager-Hanssen is no stranger to bankruptcy, be it the personal variety or the many companies he has driven into the ground over the past three decades. Ager-Hanssen’s history is littered with companies in which he acquired a stake and then looted from within. nChain was just his latest attempt at such a ploy but his machinations were exposed before he could seal this deal.

This spring, U.K. media outlet The Guardian revealed that Ager-Hanssen had attempted to use £70,000 in nChain funds to butter up Conservative party bigwigs without the knowledge of or permission from nChain’s board or shareholders.

Ager-Hanssen hoped such largesse would encourage them to sign up for his True Blue app, which wanted to target Tory membership databases with third-party product advertisements, with the party gaining a portion of the sales revenue.

Ager-Hanssen pitched his app as having already signed up major companies including Amazon, Apple and Coca-Cola, none of which expressed any knowledge of such arrangements when contacted by The Guardian.

It’s somewhat fitting that Ager-Hanssen’s latest bankruptcy came the same day that former U.S. Representative George Santos (R-NY) pleaded guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. Santos, who was booted from Congress late last year, was indicted in May 2023 on felony charges of stealing from political donors and using campaign contributions.

Santos has been labeled a ‘serial fantasist’ for his apparent inability to discern fact from fiction when it comes to his own accomplishments. Ager-Hanssen shares this Walter Mitty capacity to imagine himself possessing superlative skills and capable of great achievements, even as his real life is dominated by abject failure.

Ager-Hanssen’s fantasies included telling everyone that he was a billionaire, claims that were met with derision by many, including a newspaper in his home country that titled one article “Ager-Hanssen is worth 10 kroner.” If you need further evidence, consider that Ager-Hanssen’s latest bankruptcy came via a debt that any self-respecting billionaire might dismiss as little more than a bar tab.

Whistleblowers blow it

Meanwhile, Ager-Hanssen’s claims of being a ‘whistleblower’ have taken a major hit after the group he claims supports him was exposed as a pay-for-play.

In May, AHE issued an article titled Ager-Hanssen hires Tory-linked ‘whistleblowing PR’ vultures, which pokes some serious holes in Ager-Hanssen’s claims to performing a public service rather than attempting to cover the tracks of his failed attack on his last employer.

Ager-Hanssen’s publication of a self-described ‘whistleblower’ report shortly after his sacking from nChain led to a U.K. court judgment against him, as he blatantly ignored nChain’s ownership of the proprietary data featured in his report. In his bid to take revenge on nChain for thwarting his coup, Ager-Hanssen appeared to believe that embracing the ‘whistleblower’ mantle would immunize him from further legal blowback.

He thought wrong. Particularly since the ‘whistleblower’ organization he’s aligned himself with appears no more sincere than Ager-Hanssen’s claims of acting in anything but his own naked self-interest.

This summer, Ager-Hanssen began tweeting at and retweeting an X account run by WhistleblowersUK (WBUK), a group run by one Georgina Halford-Hall. WBUK promotes itself as “a not-for-profit organisation that reinvests its surplus income to provide help, support and information to whistleblowers.”

Halford-Hall used to work at a different firm, Whistleblowers UK (note the space before ‘UK’), which stresses that it “is not associated with any entity using ‘Whistle Blowers’ or ‘Whistle Blowing’ within its URL (internet title) or trading name.”

AHE reports that WBUK “charges clients £100 per hour for their help and only agrees to represent individuals in return for a cut of any settlement money they receive.” The site posted a contract it claims WBUK sends potential clients, listing the £100 per hour rate “for the work we undertake.”

The contract also features a ‘donations’ section that ensures clients “commit to making an agreed percentage donation to WBUK of 5%” of any funds garnered via court judgment or settlement. AHE believes this contract “is likely illegal and a breach of section 4 of the Compensation Act 2006 which states that people cannot offer such services in return for money unless they are authorised claim management agents, which WBUK is not.”

As evidence of their zeal for promoting information they know is false—or should know, assuming Google still works in the U.K.—WBUK has issued tweets that conflate Ager-Hanssen’s legal troubles with a separate suit involving former nChain employee Dr. Craig Wright and the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA). WhistleblowersUK went as far as to reference “the successful outcome of [Ager-Hanssen’s] case,” when Ager-Hanssen was not a party to the COPA case.

Other tweets make similar erroneous references to judges having “ruled in [Ager-Hanssen’s] favour,” making it hard for WBUK to claim any of these ill-informed tweets were a one-off mistake. Still other tweets claim Ager-Hanssen’s prison sentence is evidence of “why so many people do not speak up,” when the reality is that Ager-Hanssen flat-out ignored his right to speak during multiple court hearings that he chose not to attend.

Given that WBUK’s contract states that it requires clients to “prepared a detailed chronology … of the circumstances surrounding your disclosures,” it’s possible that WBUK has been flat-out lied to by Ager-Hanssen. But WBUK could have disabused themselves of his lies through even cursory independent examination, and the fact that they don’t appear to have done so doesn’t speak well of their intentions.

Birds of a feather

WBUK’s founder Georgina Halford-Hall (GHH) has something of a checkered past herself, including concerns over WBUK’s involvement with the U.K.’s All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Whistleblowing.

APPG rules allow outside groups with experience in a particular subject to serve as a ‘secretariat’ but if these groups have external funding, they need to disclose details on the extent of their external donor funds.

In October 2019, North Norfolk MP Sir Norman Lamb resigned from the APPG on Whistleblowing, explaining in a letter that certain allegations made against GHH “seem extraordinary” and he “did not get responses from the secretariat to questions put to me by a concerned third party.”

Lamb also wrote to GHH, acknowledging that she may have been “distressed and upset by the request for information regarding finance” but Lamb believes “fundamentally in transparency and being accountable to members of the public who ask questions.” Receiving no answers from GHH regarding his questions, Lamb said he had “no option but to stand down” from the APPG.

The allegations against WBUK/GHH were twofold: first, that WBUK received remuneration from Constantine Cannon LLP, a U.S. law firm interested in loosening U.K. rules to allow law firms to offer ‘bounties’ to encourage whistleblowers to come forward (and, presumably, have Constantine Cannon represent them).

Second, in a witness statement submitted to the U.K. Parliament, Whistleblowers UK co-founder Eileen Chubb (who also founded the Compassion in Care charity) stated “valid concerns supported by evidence that WBUK are masquerading as a whistle-blower support organisation.” Chubb claims the reality is that WBUK “are operating as a money-making enterprise.”

In Chubb’s statement The Misconduct of WBUK, she included claims of whistleblowers who “were deliberately manipulated and exploited in their own whistle-blowing cases by [GHH] in order to gain publicity for herself and WBUK.”

There was also “evidence that [GHH] and WBUK are profit driven to the point of informing a Whistleblower that there were fees to be paid if they needed support reporting child protection and abuse issues.”

Chubb’s submission included statements from some of these whistleblowers, some of whom “contacted WBUK and whose details were passed to a law firm without their consent.” Chubb also submitted “evidence that only those cases with monetary value are being cherry picked” by WBUK.

Chubb then went for the jugular by citing whistleblowers “who were deliberately manipulated and exploited in their own whistle-blowing cases by [GHH] in order to gain publicity for herself and WBUK with the intention of adding validity to her false claims of being a whistleblower.”

At this point, we have to wonder what other sketchy NGOs will soon be aligning themselves with Ager-Hanssen’s cause. Scamnesty International? Fraudsters without Borders (Fraudeur sans Frontières)? Maybe the Red (Double) Cross?

Assuming the WBUK allegations are accurate, it suggests that Ager-Hanssen has led GHH to believe that there’s a significant payday awaiting those who support his attack on nChain. Which would offer further confirmation that, despite Ager-Hanssen’s lofty claims to be acting in the public interest, the only interest he’s ever served is feathering his own nest (with someone else’s feathers).