Wright skipped contempt hearing

Wright skipped a contempt hearing scheduled for Wednesday despite Mellor ordering him to attend in person. COPA offered to fund his travel costs, but Wright claimed in emails cited in Mellor’s ruling “that this offer does not cover even a fraction of the true costs associated with my attendance,” which apparently included a business contract he was pursuing. Wright said the “funding required to accommodate these expenses would be £240,000, calculated as £40,000 per month for the next six months. This reflects the lost contract and the financial requirements to address the situation.”

Mellor determined that Wright “puts his business interests ahead of attending the Contempt Hearing and ahead of complying with my Order that he must attend in person.” The judge went ahead with sentencing after concluding that “an adjournment would only result in wasted costs and wasted Court time.”

“I regard his estimate of loss to be grossly exaggerated since, given he had more than 6 weeks’ notice of this hearing, it is very difficult to understand why he could not have arranged his affairs so as to enable him to attend. Overall his emails sent during the morning of 18 December indicate to me that he was going to continue to come up with every possible excuse not to attend,” Mellor wrote.

Wright reportedly appeared on Thursday via a video connection and said he was in Asia without disclosing any more specific location. Mellor said during the hearing that Wright’s “arguments were ‘legal nonsense’ but acknowledged that he was not in the UK and ‘appears to be well aware of countries with which the UK does not have extradition arrangements,'” according to the BBC.

Wright “invented” a defendant

Mellor’s written judgment noted that in his previous order, he “granted some wide-ranging anti-suit and anti-threat injunctions against Dr. Wright.” Wright violated those injunctions with his latest lawsuit against Square and other defendants, Mellor found.

Wright’s lawsuit names a defendant he calls “BTC Core,” which apparently doesn’t exist. Wright alleges that BTC Core “partners” include 122 corporate entities and 22 individuals who contributed to bitcoin development and research. Wright also named BTC Core as a defendant in a 2022 lawsuit.