The Canadian government has ordered the freeze of 34 cryptocurrency wallets associated with the “Freedom Convoy” trucker protest.
The move comes after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declared a public emergency on Monday.
Ontario Provincial Police and Royal Canadian Mounted Police ordered that all transactions going through regulated Canadian financial firms be halted. Federal authorities are also investigating all donations that have been made in support of the convoy.
CoinDesk has reported that Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Monero, and Cardano wallets are all on the list of accounts being sanctioned.
“Donors have sent more than 20 BTC to the addresses, worth over $870,000 (CA$1.1 million). The donors turned to cryptocurrencies after the GoFundMe account that had previously received more than $9 million was suspended,” CoinDesk reports. “The Emergencies Act was set to take aim at protester finances. Speaking alongside Trudeau, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said banks can immediately freeze or suspend bank accounts tied to the truckers without a court order and without fear of civil liability.”
Earlier this week, as Timcast previously reported, two personal bank accounts with TD Bank were frozen after over $1 million in support for the Freedom Convoy were paid into them.
Keith Wilson, an attorney for the Freedom Convoy, told Reuters that TD Bank was “on notice that their actions are improper and disappointing.” He added that the movement will seek a court order to compel the bank to release the money to a new not-for-profit organization and is “going to be taking the Ontario government to court to seek an immediate lifting of what we consider to be an unlawful order.”
In early February, GoFundMe took down the convoy’s fundraising page after it received over $10 million in donations. Texas, Florida, Missouri, and West Virginia are investigating the fundraising platform for blocking and withholding donations.
After the GoFundMe was shut down, the fundraiser was moved to their Christian competitor GiveSendGo — where $11 million CAD was raised.
The Canadian government ordered GiveSendGo to freeze the funds, but the company said that they would not comply. The website was subsequently hacked and taken offline.
Distributed Denial of Secrets, a website that has hosted leaked and stolen data of right-wing groups, announced on Monday morning that it has been sent 30 megabytes of GiveSendGo donor information. The information included names, email addresses, zip codes, and IP addresses.
The trucker protest has been ongoing since the end of January in response to the Canadian government mandating vaccines or two-week quarantines for drivers going through the border to the United States. The drivers have blocked multiple bridges and border points of entry.
