{"id":14162,"date":"2019-07-24T20:32:36","date_gmt":"2019-07-24T20:32:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/?p=14162"},"modified":"2019-07-30T09:58:10","modified_gmt":"2019-07-30T09:58:10","slug":"kleiman-v-wright-international-deposition-and-discovery-requested-from-andrew-ohagan-ramona-watts-and-robert-macgregor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2019\/07\/24\/kleiman-v-wright-international-deposition-and-discovery-requested-from-andrew-ohagan-ramona-watts-and-robert-macgregor\/","title":{"rendered":"Kleiman v. Wright \u2014 international deposition and discovery requested from Craig Wright’s biographer, his wife and his boss"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ira Kleiman has asked,<\/a> and the judges in Kleiman v. Wright<\/a> have just requested, discovery and depositions<\/a> from three UK residents \u2014 Andrew O’Hagan, Ramona Watts and Robert MacGregor \u2014 Craig Wright’s biographer, his wife, and his (previous?) boss. The request was signed on Monday 22 July and put up on the docket<\/a> today, Wednesday 24 July, around 15:00 UTC.<\/p>\n

This international request is under the Hague Evidence Convention<\/a> (“The Hague Convention of 18 March 1970 on the Taking of Evidence Abroad in Civil or Commercial Matters”). It’s a normal way of making this sort of discovery request \u2014 per the quick explainer,<\/a> “A letter of request shall be executed ‘expeditiously’ and may be refused only in specific cases.”<\/p>\n

The case was brought by Ira Kleiman as the executor of his brother Dave Kleiman’s estate. Craig Wright says he mined a million bitcoins with Dave as “Satoshi Nakamoto,” the creator of Bitcoin \u2014 so, asks Ira, where are Dave’s bitcoins from the Satoshi stash?<\/p>\n

The players \u2014 who are these UK witnesses?<\/h3>\n

Robert MacGregor<\/strong> was Craig Wright’s immediate contact with Calvin Ayre.<\/strong> MacGregor had been convinced by Wright and his associate Stefan Matthews<\/strong> that Wright really was Satoshi Nakamoto \u2014 the inventor of Bitcoin.<\/p>\n

MacGregor worked out a deal for Ayre to buy Wright’s companies, clear his considerable debts, and hire him at nCrypt (now called nChain<\/a>). He drafted the deal to include Satoshi’s “life rights” \u2014 and commissioned Andrew O’Hagan,<\/strong><\/a> a novelist and journalist of some repute, to write a biography.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Hagan didn\u2019t take their money, and refused to sign a contract, or even a nondisclosure agreement \u2014 but instead, he pursued the story as an embedded but independent journalist, given complete access by MacGregor and nCrypt. They seem to have trusted in O’Hagan’s professionalism.<\/p>\n

The planned official biography didn’t come out \u2014 but O’Hagan eventually published a book-length article on Wright, The Satoshi Affair<\/i><\/a> (archive<\/a>), in the London Review of Books<\/i> in 2016, and expanded it for his book The Secret Life: Three True Stories<\/i> (UK<\/a>, US<\/a>) in 2017. I used O’Hagan’s piece extensively as a source in the Craig Wright section of Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain.<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n

O’Hagan’s story starts with Wright and his wife, Ramona Watts,<\/strong> ducking out of their Sydney North Shore house and skipping the country, just ahead of an Australian Tax Office raid on 9 December 2015.<\/p>\n

In the course of the present suit, Wright said that Watts had worked in his companies since 2011, knew of his work with Dave Kleiman<\/strong>, and was involved in the deal with MacGregor. Ira Kleiman<\/strong> says that Watts contacted him and asked him to take (unspecified) actions when Wright and Watts were being investigated by the ATO.<\/p>\n

Documents requested in discovery<\/h3>\n

O’Hagan has been asked to produce all documents and recordings used in writing The Satoshi Affair,<\/i> any previous drafts of the text, including edits and comments, and any email correspondence with Wright, Watts, MacGregor, Matthews or Ayre \u2014 so, pretty much everything he used to create the article.<\/p>\n

Watts has been asked to produce:<\/p>\n