07-16-2026 
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Serial grifter Christen Ager-Hanssen (CAH) and his ‘gang that couldn’t sue straight’ have suffered an emphatic rejection of an unfair dismissal suit brought against blockchain technology firm nChain by two of its former senior executives.
- Tribunal rejects nChain coup plotters’ whistleblowing claims
- Traditionally, whistleblowing claims require evidence
- Which co-conspirators will be next in the firing line?
- Ager-Hanssen the magician who ‘ran out of tricks?’
On June 30, a three-member panel of the London Central Employment Tribunal (LCET) rejected claims of unfair dismissal by David Brookes and Andrew Moody, the former general counsel and chief financial officer, respectively, of nChain UK. The ruling also heaped scorn on the execs’ claims to be whistleblowers seeking to expose corporate wrongdoing by their former employer.
Brookes and Moody were dismissed from nChain in November 2023 for gross misconduct following what the LCET panel called a “rigorous and independent” investigation by an outside law firm into CAH’s failed boardroom coup in September of that year. CAH briefly served as nChain CEO until his own dismissal following the abortive coup. [Disclosure: CoinGeek’s owner is an nChain shareholder.]
The failed coup followed CAH’s release of a ‘whistleblowing’ document containing false allegations of fraud that were ultimately rejected by nChain’s board of directors. Their initial plan thwarted, CAH and his minions staged an after-hours raid on nChain’s offices that involved attempts at disabling security cameras, shredding documents and breaking into nChain’s server room in an apparent bid to copy/steal sensitive company data.
Following their dismissal, Brookes and Moody filed protests in which they embraced CAH’s ‘whistleblowing’ subterfuge, insisting they’d been sacked not for their egregious conduct but because of their principled stand against nChain’s alleged malfeasance.
Bollocks, said the LCET, calling the pair’s allegations “absurd” and “entirely without substance.” Neither Brookes nor Moody “had a genuine belief” in their whistleblower claims, which the panel said appear to have been “very much reverse engineered” to fit CAH’s “conspiracy theories.”
The panel went further, saying Brookes “was simply someone who was prepared to do Mr Ager-Hanssen’s bidding in order to further Mr Ager-Hanssen’s own agenda.” Moody was “prepared to be dishonest for Mr Ager-Hanssen”, including being “prepared to include misleading information in his financial reports, in contravention of his professional duties as an accountant.”
Both Brookes and Moody were found “entirely responsible for the reasons why they were dismissed.” Having failed to prove they’d made any protected disclosures via their whistleblowing claims, the panel declared that the pair “were not whistleblowers.”
The ruling wasn’t a complete slam dunk, as the panel found that nChain had made a minor procedural error in dismissing Moody. However, this victory proved hollow, as the tribunal declined to award Moody any monetary compensation, calling it “inconceivable that Mr Moody would not have been dismissed, given the weight of evidence of his misconduct.” (nChain acknowledged the error and vowed to remedy any shortcomings in its internal disciplinary procedures.)
nChain director Elena Spiers-King characterized the LCET ruling as “not just a major victory for nChain, it is a victory for common sense and justice.” Spiers-King added that “it is sometimes too easy for dishonest actors to shape their own narratives, to confect conspiracy theories and seek to take advantage by intimidation.”
nChain’s attorneys were similarly pleased, with Steven Cochrane of CMS saying Brookes and Moody’s “central allegation—that our clients had subjected whistleblowers to detriment—was entirely without substance. The judgment vindicates our clients completely on these matters and conversely makes notable adverse findings on the reliability of the Claimants’ evidence, going as far as to state that both Claimants had been dishonest.”
Whistle faux’ers
As for why Brookes and Moody would join CAH in draping themselves in such threadbare ‘whistleblower’ armor, it’s worth noting that CAH has aligned his efforts with WhistleblowersUK, a ‘not for profit’ group that claims 5% of any cash resulting from financial settlements/damages collected by individuals with which the group partners.
WhistleblowersUK has been accused of turning away legitimate whistleblowers due to their inability to pay the ‘nonprofit’ for its services. But the group appears to have welcomed CAH with open arms, likely due to his spurious claims to have the goods on a company with deep financial pockets.It’s worth recalling that CAH is currently a fugitive from U.K. justice, having fled the country to avoid a 10-month prison sentence ordered by the U.K. High Court of Justice’s Kings Bench Division on May 3, 2024. CAH was found to be in contempt of said court thanks to “deliberate” breaches of orders for him to return property belonging to nChain, as well as CAH’s failure to participate in court proceedings.
It’s also worth recalling that CAH’s impressive string of personal bankruptcies is dwarfed by the number of companies that have been run into the ground under his watch. It’s unclear why WhistleblowersUK would want to associate itself with such a tawdry criminal, that is, apart from the obvious financial incentives.
The act of whistleblowing is supposed to involve the legitimate exposure of corporate or public wrongdoing, not serve as a ‘get out of coup free’ card for corporate crooks. And for every incident in which fake whistleblowers claim some truth-telling fig leaf of propriety, the less likely it is for real whistleblowers to be taken seriously.
Following the foot soldiers
None of the three figures discussed above (CAH, Brookes and Moody) held shares in nChain, making their coup attempt even more inexplicable. Presumably, once they seized control of nChain, they planned to award themselves significant stock allocations before selling off pieces of the company. That would fit with CAH’s previous corporate lootings, which have always focused on immediately monetizing rather than growing companies in which he gains a toehold.
It remains something of a mystery as to why Moody went along with CAH’s plan. Unlike Brookes, Moody was a longtime nChain exec, with little tying him to the Norwegian narcissist.
Brookes, on the other hand, can trace his CAH ties back years, including serving as general counsel for CAH’s ‘investment’ firm Custos Group, making him a veteran of unsuccessful pillages of takeover targets.
And what of the other coup plotters, like Custos partner Lars Jacob Bø, who Ager-Hanssen appointed as nChain deputy CEO a couple months before the botched takeover? Bø, who currently serves as a Norway-based advisory partner to consultant Bain & Company, was cited in nChain legal filings as having “assisted the aims of the conspiracy, in particular extracting confidential information belonging to nChain and causing harm to nChain” through his support of CAH’s bogus whistleblowing document.
Or Endri Gjata, who like Bø was a Custos alum, serving as that company’s chief technical officer (CTO). Court filings indicate some uncertainty as to what role(s) Gjata served during his brief tenure at nChain (January to September 2023): CTO, chief marketing officer, or both. Regardless, the filings indicate that Gjata was “involved in the covering and attempted disabling of the CCTV cameras in the nChain offices in London.”
Gjata, along with Moody, is also said to have “attempted to force access” to the nChain server room and, once access was gained, “attempted to gain unauthorized access to the servers themselves, presumably to access the email accounts, or other confidential information, directly.” Gjata is also said to have been “aware of documents being shredded by [Brookes] and did nothing to stop these actions.”
Stranger than fiction
CAH has understandably been keeping a low profile of late (likely trying not to lose more luxury timepieces to the Swedish taxman’s debt collectors), while his wife Caroline has her own issues with Scandinavian bailiffs (possibly due to CAH playing her for a mark as well).
In an interesting twist, CAH’s daughter published her first novel Härverk (Havoc) last year, so inventing stories out of whole cloth must run in the family. Then again, since the novel’s protagonist is a woman whose father is a “former dot-com millionaire, the magician with the grand plans and the unbreakable self-confidence” who then “ran out of tricks,” forcing the family “to hide from the bailiffs,” it seems art really does imitate life.
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