Mirror Trading International: thirteen answers and a clawback process

The thirteen questions Justice M.A. Marion put in April were lettered (a) to (m), and on August 24 the receiver answered them in a table. Question (a) asked what a claims process would cost against the cost of carrying on with the lawsuits already filed in Alberta, and who would pay. The answer is approximately $700,000 to $1,100,000, plus taxes and the costs of a claims adjudicator, borne by the estate in the first instance; "to date, a total of $1 million has been spent in the recognition proceedings and pursuing the Clawback Actions." Question (l) asked whether French-language processes would be accommodated for defendants if requested. "To date, no accommodations have been requested," per the Aide Memoire, Aug. 24, 2026, Sch. "A", items (a), (l).

The table is an aide memoire filed by Miller Thomson LLP for GlassRatner Restructuring Inc., the national receiver appointed in April over property of Mirror Trading International (Pty) Ltd. held by Canadian investors. The brief filed with it records that a South African court found MTI, on or about April 26, 2023, to be "an illegal and unlawful pyramid investment scheme," per the Brief of Law, Aug. 24, 2026, para. 14. The table indexes the rest of the filing: a Second Report of 133 pages with its appendices, the brief and a draft order. The judge had set the questions in reasons of April 15, after asking the foreign representative's counsel several questions about the proposed process at the hearing: "In most instances, a detailed response was not possible because the Claims Process details had not been worked out," per the Reasons for Decision (2026 ABKB 293), Apr. 15, 2026, para. 132.

When the case was last reported here, on June 29, the foreign representative, with the receiver's support, had just asked for the receiver's reach to be widened from the thirty-one largest Canadian recipients of MTI's Bitcoin to all of them. On July 7, sitting in Edmonton, Justice Marion granted the amended and restated receivership order. It defines a Canadian Investor as "any person who received Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency from the Debtor, who currently resides in Canada, or resided in Canada at the time they received the cryptocurrency." The same order gives the receiver and its counsel a first-ranking charge of up to $500,000, lets the receiver borrow up to $500,000 against a second charge, permits service on investors by email backed by a public service list of their names and email addresses, and stays the liquidators' Alberta lawsuits until further order, per the Amended and Restated Receivership Order, July 7, 2026, paras. 12, 16, 24, 26, Sch. "A". It was filed on July 29.

One ruling, then a number for each investor

The receiver's model is the recent trilogy of Canadian clawback decisions — My Mortgage Auction Corp. (Re), 2025 BCSC 1520, Grozelle (Re), 2026 ONSC 758, and Quigley (Re), 2026 BCSC 1233 — in which trustees in bankruptcy pursued investors who, in the brief's words, "were beneficiaries of Ponzi schemes" through two-phase processes the courts approved, per the Brief of Law, Aug. 24, 2026, paras. 3, 31–36. Here the first phase is a single application for a Liability Order declaring MTI's Bitcoin transfers to the listed investors void or voidable as against the receiver, on any of eight grounds: ss. 26, 29 and 30 of South Africa's Insolvency Act, 24 of 1936; ss. 95 and 96 of the BIA; the provincial fraudulent preference statutes; unjust enrichment; and conversion. The list is expressly not exhaustive, and any defence to liability is to be raised at that hearing, per the draft order in the Second Report of the Receiver, Aug. 24, 2026, App. "E" (draft Claims Process Approval Order), paras. 3–5.

The South African grounds are the ones already pleaded in the Alberta actions. Under s. 26, the transfers are said to be dispositions without value made less than two years before MTI's liquidation, at a time when its liabilities exceeded its assets; under s. 29, voidable preferences made within six months of it; under s. 30, undue preferences, per the Brief of Law, Aug. 24, 2026, para. 22. The receiver will file expert evidence on South African law, and asks that the deemed undertaking rule not apply between the lawsuits and the receivership, so that documents produced in the one can be used by either side in the other, per the Second Report, paras. 27–32.

The second phase begins only if the Liability Order is granted. Within 30 days the receiver sends each investor a Clawback Calculation. The investor then has 30 days to deliver a notice of dispute. One who does not is "conclusively deemed to be indebted to the estate in the amount shown in their Clawback Calculation" and has 45 days more to pay, "failing which the Receiver shall be granted judgment against them," enforceable without further order. An investor who disputes has 60 days to settle with the receiver, and inside the same 60 days must file and serve a notice of application with affidavit evidence, or the receiver is granted judgment for the calculated amount. The court may send a contested application to a claims adjudicator. The order preserves an investor's right to argue that a calculation ignores joint accounts or related people and entities, and the receiver may settle at any stage, per the Second Report, App. "E", paras. 6–14, 23. The notice of application puts the result more plainly: the receiver "will be presumptively entitled to judgment for the amount of the Clawback Calculation unless the Investor objects to the calculation within 30 days of receiving the same and files application materials with the Court," per the Application (Claims Process), returnable Sept. 2, 2026, para. 24.

The paperwork for the last step is already drafted. The notice of dispute form takes its figures in Bitcoin. The receiver's certificate at Schedule "C" records that an investor owes a blank number of "Bitcoin (or the cash equivalent thereof)," and recites a Liability Order dated "October , 2026" with the day left open; the judgment form at Schedule "D" orders the investor to pay the receiver "the sum of [AMOUNT]," per the Second Report, App. "E", Schs. "B"–"D".

Who is in it first

The July order reached every Canadian recipient; the first schedule of the claims process does not. Schedule "A" to the draft order lists twenty-three investors by name. The report describes the list as the defendants in the pending Alberta lawsuits, the Clawback Actions, and says any defendant who has moved to set aside a default judgment or a noting in default is in the process too, per the Second Report, paras. 24, 38. The brief counts one motion of each kind. Of the nineteen actions the liquidators brought after recognition in 2023, against twenty-three investors and eight John Does, it says four have settled, five default judgments have been granted and twelve remain ongoing, delayed by "various procedural arguments and related interlocutory applications," per the Brief of Law, paras. 16, 24–25.

Default judgments are left undisturbed and may still be enforced, settlements stand, and the twelve surviving actions, listed in Schedule "E," remain stayed, with the parties free to apply to lift the stay in any one of them, per the Second Report, paras. 38–40; App. "E", para. 15. The draft order names no one else among the approximately 1,550 Canadian investors who, per the First Report of the Receiver, June 29, 2026, para. 22, received 951.9 Bitcoin between them. Among its activities since April, the receiver lists "considering and analyzing the viability of claims against an expanded group of investors that are not subject to the Clawback Actions," per the Second Report, para. 56(h).