An Iranian national based in Spain is suing a fintech firm in the High Court over the company’s alleged seizure of his $2.8 million (€2.4 million) in cryptocurrency assets.
Ali Asghar Afrouz (74) claims Coinbase wrongfully froze and seized his assets held in his account on the platform following purported concerns about the source of his wealth.
In court documents, Afrouz submits Coinbase told him his assets were seized by US authorities following the execution of a warrant. He asserts that there are no grounds for the seizure of his assets by the US.
Afrouz, with an address in Marbella, Spain, is suing Coinbase Europe Ltd and Coinbase Luxembourg SA, seeking the return of his assets.
Coinbase Europe’s parent company, Coinbase Group, is the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the US and the world’s biggest custodian of Bitcoin. Coinbase Europe is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland.
On Monday, Judge Mark Sanfey agreed to admit the case to the fast-track Commercial Court on consent of the parties.
In a sworn statement to the court, Afrouz said that following his relocation to Spain in 2022, he sold a beachfront property in Iran for $3 million (€2.57 million). This transaction is the source of the cryptocurrency at issue in the proceedings, he said.
Afrouz said he converted the proceeds of the property sale to cryptocurrency with the assistance of several intermediaries. This was necessary to access his money in Spain, he said, due to sanctions against the Iranian banking sector.
Afrouz said he opened a Coinbase account in July 2025, and subsequently transferred the substantial sums of Bitcoin and Ethereum from a personal wallet to his Coinbase account.
Coinbase then notified Afrouz that due to recent activity on his account, it required further verification, and that his account may be restricted if he did not take action, Afrouz said. The perceived lack of verification information was not outlined, he submitted.
His account was then locked “without any meaningful opportunity to resolve the issue”, Afrouz said.
The value of the assets held in his account at the time was $2.83 million, he submitted.
He submits that Coinbase has adopted “a series of wholly contradictory and irreconcilable positions” regarding his assets.
Despite notifying him of the purported permanent deletion of his Coinbase account in September, the platform’s support team emailed him in October stating that it was “actively working on resolving the issue”, and that he would receive an update following the completion of a review of his case, Afrouz claimed.
The most “egregious” contradiction was Coinbase’s assertion in December that his assets were seized by the United States Homeland Security Investigations in August on foot of a warrant.
“I am advised and believe that [Coinbase] either unlawfully retained my assets under the guise of an internal compliance review while a foreign warrant was executed, or they are now retrospectively relying on a foreign warrant to justify an arbitrary internal freezing of my account,” Afrouz alleged.
Afrouz submitted that he is unaware of any warrant, and claimed there was “absolutely no grounds” for enforcement action or seizure of his assets by the US.
Afrouz submits that he is advised Coinbase cannot arbitrarily seize on the instruction of a foreign law enforcement agency “without due process in this jurisdiction”. He submitted that for a foreign seizure to be legally binding on an Irish registered entity, it requires a request to the Department of Justice.
Afrouz is seeking various reliefs, including an injunction compelling Coinbase to restore his account to permit the withdrawal of his funds.
