Where in the world are Su Zhu and Kyle Davies? The founders of the cryptocurrency hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC) are nowhere to be found, according to officials charged with liquidating the bankrupt company (via Reuters).
According to a court document filed Friday, Zhu and Davies’ whereabouts are currently unknown, and its liquidators say they have not received “any meaningful cooperation” from the two. On Tuesday, a judge granted 3AC’s liquidators full control of 3AC’s assets, preventing them from transferring any money out of their accounts.
The Singapore-based 3AC filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy earlier this month, a move designed to protect foreign companies’ assets from creditors in the US. News of the bankruptcy filing surfaced after 3AC defaulted on a $670 million loan provided by crypto broker Voyager Digital, which has since filed for bankruptcy as well. 3AC also reportedly failed to repay $270 million to crypto exchange Blockchain.com. A British Virgin Islands court tasked business management company Teneo with overseeing 3AC’s liquidation.
There’s an “imminent risk” that the duo could attempt to transfer the company’s remaining funds elsewhere
Russell Crumpler and Christopher Farmer, two senior directors at Teneo, claim they have been unable to get in touch with Zhu and Davies. In the court filing, Crumpler and Farmer allege they joined a Zoom call with “persons identifying themselves as ‘Su Zhu’ and ‘Kyle,’” but “their video was turned off and they were on mute at all times with neither of them speaking despite questions being posed to them directly.”
During the Zoom call, the two founders communicated through representatives from the Singapore-based legal agency, Advocatus and Solitaire. Farmer alleges that he even tried locating Zhu and Davies at the 3AC headquarters in Singapore — only to find a locked door and a pile of unopened mail. The filing notes Zhu may be trying to sell his $35 million mansion in Singapore, citing various rumors.
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Crumpler and Farmer claim there’s an “imminent risk” that the duo could attempt to transfer the company’s remaining funds elsewhere. “Here, that risk is heightened because a substantial portion of the Debtor’s assets are comprised of cash and digital assets, such as cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens, that are readily transferrable,” the filing reads. “The Foreign Representatives [Teneo], the Debtor [3AC], and its creditors as a whole would be irreparably harmed if any disposition of the Debtor’s assets were to occur during the provisional period.”
After Crumpler and Farmer made the filing, Zhu accused the liquidators of “baiting.” In a post on Twitter, Zhu attached two screenshots of email correspondence between Crumpler and Advocatus and Solitaire representative Christopher Anand Daniel, who claims the liquidators were “keen to ask if the discussions were on a ‘without prejudice basis,’” so they “could use the discussions in Court filings without notice to” Zhu and Davies.
“It appears, therefore, that contrary to your representations that you were seeking to engage our clients in good faith, and constructively, you had already prepared to make that application, and were in fact baiting our clients,” Daniel adds. He goes on to explain that the founders and their families have “received threats of physical violence” and have also been “working under a lot of time pressure” to answer questions from the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
That’s the explanation given for Davies and Zhu allegedly not being all that cooperative with the liquidators. But they still don’t plan on meeting with Teneo’s agents — Daniels declined to participate in a phone call on their behalf. “Depending on your response, we will let you know when our clients can reasonably be expected to speak with you.”
Davies and Zhu’s apparent disappearance isn’t that unusual in the world of crypto. Users struggled to sue Binance last year after the exchange halted trading while Bitcoin plunged in value... because they couldn’t really figure out how to sue. And in another case of weirdness, crypto exchange QuadrigaCX CEO Gerald Cotten died, and his clients’ funds, which were valued at about $250 million, were missing. (Mysteriously, former Quadriga executive Michael Patryn went on to found the Wonderland DeFi protocol.)
The collapse of major cryptocurrency firms like 3AC has caused a lot of damage to the crypto market that likely hasn’t been fully realized yet. Crypto lending firms Babel Finance and Celcius have also been rocked by the turbulent market, with both companies freezing transactions amidst a “crypto winter.”
Update July 12th, 6:57PM ET: Updated to add a response from Su Zhu and his legal representation, as well as to note that a court has given liquidators control of 3AC’s assets.
