During a brief review of the case against 45-year-old Jawad Yaqub, prosecuting KC Samuel Magee said arranging the giving of evidence would be a logistical challenge.
He told Downpatrick Crown Court there would be 32 witnesses from 18 countries, including 12 in the US, three in Australia, two in Holland and others in Vietnam and Japan.
The Public Prosecution Service will have to write to each of the countries, asking for their cooperation, ahead of the trial starting on March 4.
Yaqub, from Ben Vista Park in Holywood, faces 19 charges of converting criminal property, four counts of fraud by false representation and single charges of fraudulent training and theft, allegedly committed on dates between February 2016 and October 2018.
Yaqub, a director in Razormind Limited, is accused of using the business “for a fraudulent purpose — namely, to defraud participants in a decentralised operating system crowd sale”.
The fraud by false representation charges allege that he claimed Razormind Ltd was “a world-leading information technology services company providing a wide range of services to a substantial and diversified client base including corporations, financial institutions, governments and high net worth individuals”.
The claimed client list is alleged to have included the Bank of America, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, the Center for Responsible Lending, Chubb, Deutsche Lufthansa, the Farmers’ Mutual Group, HealthPartners, Telefonica O2 and Texas Public Schools.
Yaqub also allegedly claimed he had obtained an MPhil and PhD from Queen’s University.
The theft charge alleges that he stole 397.504 Bitcoin belonging to Razormind Limited. At current market value, that equates to more than £8m.
With the case involving witnesses from multiple time zones, Judge Geoffrey Miller KC suggested that Mr Magee and defence KC Eilish McDermott meet with the court and decide a way forward. That was scheduled for December 11.
