Court dismisses investor’s $12m claim against Snap Innovations and founder of crypto platform Torque
Source: Straits Times
Article Date: 06 Aug 2024
Author: Joyce Lim
Court rules investor failed to provide sufficient evidence to prove authenticity of service agreement he relied on.
The High Court has dismissed a US$9 million (S$12 million) lawsuit brought by a Greek investor against Singapore fintech firm Snap Innovations and businessman Bernard Ong, founder of failed crypto firm Torque.
In a written judgment released on Aug 2, the court ruled that Mr Georgios Baizanis had failed to provide sufficient evidence to prove the authenticity of a service agreement that allegedly committed Snap to replacing stolen digital assets.
Additionally, the court found that Mr Ong, 36, who held the title of managing director at Snap, did not actually have the authority to bind Snap to such an agreement.
Mr Baizanis, 49, claimed that a service agreement signed on May 24, 2019, guaranteed compensation for any digital assets stolen by Snap’s staff within five business days. The agreement was supposedly signed by Mr Ong and Mr Wu Zongyi (also known as Zee), a Snap director in Vietnam.
Mr Baizanis, represented by lawyers David Ong and Matthew Chua of law practice David Ong & Co, sued Snap in 2021 for breaching the corporate guarantee and failing to supervise Zee. He also pursued Mr Ong, as Snap’s managing director, for breach of warranty of authority.
Snap, represented by lawyers Christopher de Souza, Basil Lee and Darius Tan from law firm Lee & Lee, denied all the claims. In its defence filed with the High Court in 2021, the firm said it never had trading operations in Vietnam through Snap Vietnam.
Snap also said Mr Ong was not a registered director. He was an independent contractor engaged to market products and services, and this task was facilitated by listing him as a director on the company’s website.
Mr Ong denied having signed any corporate guarantee and being acquainted with Mr Baizanis.
Mr Baizanis, who said he started investing in Snap’s cryptocurrency trading platform Cryptotrage in 2018, argued that after the corporate guarantee was signed, he increased his investments by another $5 million. But in February 2021, he discovered that his investments had vanished.
Mr Baizanis said a Snap Vietnam employee informed him that Zee, who was managing Cryptotrage and also held the position of chief technology officer at Torque, had gone missing.
On the same day, Mr Ong told Torque’s investors that Zee used Torque funds to engage in unauthorised trading activities, which led to massive losses.
He subsequently made a police report against Zee and wound up Torque, which was incorporated in the British Virgin Islands, in March 2021.
In his judgment released on Aug 2, Judicial Commissioner Christopher Tan dismissed all of Mr Baizanis’ claims against Snap Innovations and Mr Ong.
The court ruled that Mr Baizanis failed to provide sufficient evidence to prove the authenticity of the service agreement he relied on.
The judgment noted that the provenance of the document was dubious. The defendants were able to show that Mr Ong’s signature was likely “copy-pasted”, thereby establishing that the service agreement was forged, rendering the agreement inadmissible as evidence.
The court further concluded that neither Mr Ong nor Zee had the actual authority to bind Snap to such a contract.
The claim against Mr Ong for breach of warranty of authority also failed. Judicial Commissioner Tan pointed out that Mr Baizanis did not transact directly with Mr Ong, but with Zee, and Mr Ong had made no warranty regarding Zee’s authority.
Furthermore, the court found that Mr Baizanis failed to demonstrate that the loss of his cryptocurrencies was due to internal fraud as defined by the clause in the service agreement.
Even if the agreement was binding, the clause would not have been triggered, and Snap’s obligation to indemnify would not have come into effect, the judgment noted.
The court also dismissed the claim that Snap and Mr Ong had a duty to supervise Zee, noting that Mr Baizanis failed to establish that such a duty existed.
Following the ruling, Snap’s lawyers said their client is “very pleased that the court has dismissed all claims against it”. “In particular, the court found that the document which the plaintiff sought to rely on as his contract with our client was not authentic and was, in fact, a forgery,” they added.
Noting that the case has put a spotlight on the risks involved in cryptocurrency investments, Mr Sarbrinder Singh of law firm Sanders Law, who represented Mr Ong, said investors should do their due diligence by performing thorough background checks and reaching out to the people running any investment scheme.
Mr Ong, who faces a separate lawsuit from Torque’s liquidators seeking to recover hundreds of millions in cryptocurrency that were allegedly lost on his watch, said he is not surprised by the outcome of the lawsuit.
“I have always been confident that I am innocent. This whole case is absurd to me because I don’t even know who George (Baizanis) is. He also said he has never met me. I am shocked to be dragged into the lawsuit, and of course, I would go all out to prove my innocence,” he said.
Mr Baizanis said he does not agree with the judgment.
Source: Straits Times © SPH Media Limited. Permission required for reproduction.
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