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Christopher Emms travelled to North Korea alongside Virgil Griffith for a blockchain conference in 2019, drawing ire of the US Original...
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![Christopher Emms travelled to North Korea alongside Virgil Griffith for a blockchain conference in 2019, drawing ire of the US Original article by By David Canellis at Blockworks - July 29, 2022 Emms has been in legal limbo in Saudi Arabia for the past five months, awaiting potential extradition to the US UK parliament member Crispin Blunt is now petitioning the Foreign Office to intervene Cryptocurrency insider Christopher Emms, who presented at North Korea’s infamous blockchain “conference,” is fighting what he calls his wrongful detention in Saudi Arabia over the past six months at the hands of the US government. In February, Emms was arrested in Riyadh’s airport following an Interpol Red Notice issued by the US. Emms, a 30-year-old British citizen who’d been living in and working for Roger Ver’s Bitcoin.com out of Dubai, had been invited to the capital by the Saudi government to attend its One Giant Leap technology conference. He was apprehended on his way back to the United Arab Emirates. The Feds allege Emms breached sanctions on North Korea when he travelled to the country in 2019 alongside US citizen Virgil Griffith — the Ethereum programmer recently sentenced to five years’ prison for presenting at the same conference. US authorities had 45 days from Emms’ arrest to provide evidence of his alleged crimes — only applicable to US citizens, which Emms is not — to support his extradition. Nothing has been lodged some 150 days later, leaving Emms stranded after posting bail following a one-day stint in a Saudi jail. In a video interview with Blockworks, Emms said he’s now forced to hop between hotels at his own expense, as he’s ineligible for residency. The US froze his bank accounts and crypto exchange accounts. “I’m literally borrowing funds from friends and family just to pay the bills; it’s difficult,” Emms said. “The British Embassy has made it clear that they don’t particularly want to help in any meaningful way.” Christopher Emms denies being Pyongyang’s blockchain mastermind According to the FBI, which features Emms on its Most Wanted list, Emms planned and organized Pyongyang’s one-day blockchain conference, and allegedly recruited an American crypto expert to join him, arranging his travel to North Korea in violation of US sanctions. While the crypto expert Emms allegedly recruited wasn’t named, it seems the FBI is referring to Griffith. Feds say Emms answered specific questions about blockchain technology and even proposed plans for smart contracts to serve Pyongyang’s interests, mapping out crypto transactions designed to evade US sanctions. US authorities, alongside the United Nations, have suggested that Pyongyang funds its nuclear missile programs by Bitcoin-fuelled ransomware attacks and cryptocurrency exchange thefts, the fruits of which have amounted to more than $1.3 billion. Christopher Emms from his hotel in Saudi Arabia | Source: Blockworks Emms said he had accepted an invitation to speak at North Korea’s blockchain conference extended via LinkedIn by Alejandro Cao de Benós, the Spanish political activist and self-styled Special Delegate of North Korea’s Committee for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries. Cao de Benós is named in an indictment alongside Emms. Emms said he’d never met or spoken to Griffith until the trip, which occurred as the crypto market had floundered for almost a year following bitcoin’s first surge to $20,000. He was there for about eight days, and the conference occurred after a tour across the country. They visited a new airport, schools, museums, a video games arcade — all empty — as well as the peninsula’s Demilitarized Zone. Eventually, Emms and the rest of the conference invitees — about eight — were taken to a conference room with some 20 people, who mostly seemed uninterested, with practically no preparation amongst the delegates. Emms and the others had their passports confiscated and were warned the event had “better go well.” “We were given a load of shit, a paper that had been copied and pasted off Google that was given to us by Cao de Benós with different titles,” Emms told Blockworks. “So, we’re all sort of in the room, and we’re like, ‘OK, who’s going to speak on what?’ We hand these pieces of paper to each other and think, ‘How are we going to deal with this?’” One of the topics provided by Cao de Benós, Emms said, was “blockchain and peace.” Another was “blockchain and tech,” leaving the delegates to ad-lib much of their presentations. UK parliament member says US abused Interpol’s Red Notice system It’s unclear why the US hasn’t complied with Saudi authorities to move Emms’ case along. Radha Stirling , an extradition expert working in support of Emms, told Blockworks she’s hoping the Saudi government will close the case, allowing him to return to the UK. “I think the US is testing where it can export its domestic policy abroad, whether they’ll be successful in requesting the extradition of a foreign national from a foreign jurisdiction,” Stirling said. “Obviously, they knew [Emms] was in Saudi [Arabia] and thought, this is a jurisdiction that’s going to give him maximum pain,” she added. “They were hoping that he would succumb to the pressure and surrender himself voluntarily, maybe enter a plea bargain and name names of other people who they’re also targeting.” The US could file for his extradition from the UK if he returns, something Emms expects to happen if he were to make it back to home soil. But, he said, the British government — including intelligence services — interviewed him extensively and told him they don’t think he’s done anything wrong. This gave Emms confidence to travel to Saudi Arabia for the One Giant Leap conference, after which he was arrested. Crispin Blunt, a long-serving member of UK parliament who has urged the nation’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the Saudi ambassador to take action, echoed Stirling’s sentiment. “Emms is a victim of an exercise in American extraterritoriality,” Blunt told Blockworks. “First of all, Chris hasn’t broken, as far as I’m aware, any British international or Saudi laws. The Americans are using the Red Notice system under Interpol improperly — jurisdiction shopping in order to make life as bloody as possible for people they identify as their opponents.” “All of us would have some anxiety about someone idiotic enough to attend a conference in Pyongyang,” Blunt added. “However, on examination, it appears that Emms has been an idiot, not a crook. Being an idiot is not a crime.” Detained in Dubai: http://www.detainedindubai.org Detained in Doha: https://www.detainedindoha.org Radha Stirling: http://www.radhastirling.com CLAN - Crypto Legal Advocacy Network - https://www.bitclan.org / Due Process International: http://www.dueprocess.international IPEX - Interpol & Extradition Reform & Defence Experts - https://www.ipexreform.com/ Podcast: http://www.gulfinjustice.news Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/detainedindubai YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/detainedindubai mail: info@detainedindubai.org](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/9c6f35_83ec63d02b7d4daf8a2571b595bdd973~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_257,h_257,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_avif,quality_auto/Image-empty-state.png)
![Christopher Emms says he’s only willing to face charges in UK for his role in 2019 crypto conference in Pyongyang A British national accused of conspiring to violate U.S. sanctions on North Korea is now stuck in Saudi Arabia, which he says has prevented him from leaving after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) added him to its most wanted list earlier this year. Christopher Emms, a 30-year-old blockchain and cryptocurrency specialist, was indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) in April 2022 in connection to sanctions breaches stemming from his participation in a 2019 crypto conference in Pyongyang. But he told NK News that he doesn’t believe the U.S. has any grounds to pursue him for his activities in North Korea, calling the charges against him “bonkers.” “If a British extradition judge states that I have committed a crime — of which I am applicable to be tried on — I’ll go,” he said in a video call last week. “But I’m not going to go to the U.S. to face the music for … a law that I don’t feel applies to me.” The 2019 crypto conference is the same one attended by Virgil Griffith, a U.S. national now serving a 63-month prison sentence for helping North Korea evade sanctions through his participation in the event. The DOJ has accused Emms of working with Griffith and Alejandro Cao de Benos, head of the pro-DPRK Korea Friendship Association, to “teach and advise members of the North Korean government on cutting-edge cryptocurrency and blockchain technology” during the conference. Emms admits he played a “minor role” in the crypto conference, sharing information “readily accessible from Google.” But he described his time in North Korea as just “a quirky tourist trip” to a country that — amid the summitry of 2018 and 2019 — “was about to open up in a radical way and engage with the West.” “I didn’t realize in any way, shape or form that U.S. law could ever apply to me,” Emms told NK News , adding he had “minimal contact” with Griffith and none with any North Koreans prior to or after his visit to Pyongyang. “I’m not American; I’m British. I’ve never been a resident of the United States. I wasn’t in the United States … so why does [this law] apply at all?” Neither the DOJ nor the FBI responded to NK News inquiries about Emm’s case. LEGAL LIMBO Experts and lawyers offered contrasting assessments of the legality of the U.S. charges against Emms. Jumin Lee, a U.S.-based attorney with experience working on North Korea-related cases, said there is nothing about the case that indicates the law is being applied to him in an “unusual way.” “Unilateral sanctions wouldn’t have much teeth if you could not apply them extraterritorially or to foreign nationals,” Lee told NK News . And Anthony Ruggiero, senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said charges against individuals like Emms “are an integral part of enforcing U.S. sanctions against North Korea” and that “third-party individuals, companies and banks must ensure that they are not aiding the Kim regime’s sanctions efforts.” But Radha Stirling of the U.K.-based Detained in Dubai , which has been helping Emms with his case, said the U.S. has no jurisdiction over the British national. “It’s a massive overreach of U.S. enforcement to seek to impose on the sovereignty of both Britain and Saudi by claiming foreign nationals are subject to U.S. law,” she told NK News . “As a British citizen, Saudi should allow him to return to the U.K. or otherwise they risk violating United Nations policies on sovereignty,” she continued. “(Likewise) we would not accept a U.S. citizen to be extradited from Britain to Saudi for an alleged Saudi violation committed in a third nation.” SENDING A MESSAGE With no sign of the U.S. justice system dropping its interest any time soon, Emms faces an uncertain future and dwindling financial resources to stay afloat. In the “best case,” Emms said, Saudi would lift the travel ban, he would be arrested upon arrival in the U.K. and then he would go through an extradition process to the U.S. “I’m confident — and the lawyers that I’ve got in the U.K. are confident — that we can win that extradition request, we can win the case,” he said. Saudi Arabia could, however, choose to extradite Emms to the U.S., where he could be transferred to the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center. Griffith was kept at the facility ahead of his court appearance in the U.S. Southern District of New York. While London last year offered “complete solidarity” to U.K. citizens targeted by Chinese sanctions, Emms told NK News no such reprieve has been relayed to him, nor have prosecutors extended a plea deal to him. Neither the Saudi nor British foreign ministries responded to NK News requests for comment. Emms estimates his legal battle, as well as his months long sojourn in the Saudi kingdom, has cost “nearly a million dollars” — which he says represents all his life savings. He also told NK News that his bank accounts have been frozen since late April after the U.S. indictment went public. For now, the U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) are providing Emms with consular support, according to letters he posted on social media . “I’m here living now, really, off the grace and goodwill of friends and family in order to pay the bills,” he explained. Emms said he thinks the U.S. justice system is targeting him as a warning to others. “You can’t prosecute everyone in the world for everything, so you tend to make examples of certain people,” he said. (Original article: NK NEWS: Chad O'Carroll July 15, 2022) ( Edited by Arius Derr) Detained in Dubai: http://www.detainedindubai.org Detained in Doha: https://www.detainedindoha.org Radha Stirling: http://www.radhastirling.com CLAN - Crypto Legal Advocacy Network - https://www.bitclan.org / Due Process International: http://www.dueprocess.international IPEX - Interpol & Extradition Reform & Defence Experts - https://www.ipexreform.com/ Podcast: http://www.gulfinjustice.news Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6KH20nw... Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/detainedindubai Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/detainedindu... YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/detainedindubai Email: info@detainedindubai.org](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/9c6f35_6963d17f630943b8836e270cd660179a~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_257,h_257,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_avif,quality_auto/Image-empty-state.png)
