Have the Seychelles built a crypto haven? Its courts are now handing some of the coins back.

Seychelles has spent two years shifting from a lightly watched incorporation hub for crypto exchanges to a jurisdiction that licenses virtual-asset businesses and, in a growing number of cases, freezes or reassigns coins still sitting on those platforms.

The change matters to victims abroad more than it does to the islands’ small domestic market. Exchanges, including entities linked to Huobi, KuCoin, OKX, and BitMEX, used Seychelles-based companies.

When stolen or disputed assets remain on a centralised platform with that corporate hook, foreign police, Ghanaian investigators and private plaintiffs have used Seychelles courts, mutual legal assistance and exchange cooperation to get at them. Once the coins leave the exchange, the trail usually dies.

A new statute, then a cull

The Virtual Asset Service Providers Act 2024 created a licensing regime for exchanges, wallet providers, brokers and investment advisers operating in or from Seychelles, and put the Financial Services Authority in charge. The Act commenced in September 2024. Operators already in the market had until 31 December 2024 to file a complete licence application. After that date, unlicensed VASP activity is an offence.

https://www.finance.gov.sc/blog/2024/08/08/seychelles-gets-its-first-vasp-law/
https://www.finance.gov.sc/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Virtual-Asset-Service-Providers-Act-2024-1.pdf
https://fsaseychelles.sc/media/regupdates/Press_Release_-_End_of_Transitional_Period_under_VASP_Act.pdf
https://fsaseychelles.sc/media/regupdates/Press_Release_-_Caution_regarding_Virtual_Asset_Services__Providers.pdf
https://seychellesfiu.sc/va-legislation/

The FSA has since published alerts stating that Seychelles international business companies were not authorised to conduct virtual-asset work. Huobi Global Limited, IBC 194154, was one of them. The authority said the company had never held a VA or VASP licence and had been struck off the IBC register on 13 October 2023 after losing its registered agent.

https://fsaseychelles.sc/media-corner/regulatory-updates/alert-huobi-global-limited-194155

In July 2026, the same regulator announced that HDR Global Trading Limited, trading as BitMEX, had withdrawn its licence application and must wind down. Client assets are to be returned. Exchange operations are due to close by 23 September 2026.

https://fsaseychelles.sc/media-corner/regulatory-updates/public-notice-hdr-global-trading-limited-trading-as-bitmex-exchange-winding-up

Courts treat crypto as property

Seychelles judges have treated tokens as movable property subject to injunctions, provisional seizure, and proprietary declarations. That is the legal hinge for most recoveries.

In Filippo v Huobi Global Limited (MA 320/2023, arising in CS 92/2023), the Supreme Court, on 26 October 2023, issued an interim injunction restraining Huobi from moving 24.61 bitcoin, said to have been placed on the exchange following a fraud against a Canadian claimant. The underlying plaint alleged that the platform had facilitated the transfer and was at fault for holding stolen assets. That order froze the coins. It is not a published November 2024 final transfer judgment; no such 2024 Filippo “return” ruling appears on SeyLII.

https://seylii.org/akn/sc/judgment/scsc/2023/810/eng@2023-10-26

A later Huobi case went further. In Lui v Huobi Global Limited (CS 124 of 2023), delivered on 15 January 2025, the court declared Dr Samson Lui the owner of approximately 7,312,857.43 USDT and 33.57 bitcoin and ordered Huobi to transfer them to the named wallets. The court accepted that Huobi had failed in its due diligence duties under anti-money-laundering rules by allowing stolen assets to remain on the platform. A March 2025 ruling validated a related provisional seizure of the same balances.

https://seylii.org/akn/sc/judgment/scsc/2025/3/eng@2025-01-15
https://www.jibudocs.com/public/summaries/e7e29422-bcde-c3a9-4999-b944972d6281
https://www.jibudocs.com/public/summaries/ba4fc6c2-20f4-9551-29d7-a4bdab13ee81

Separately, the Government of Seychelles has used proceeds-of-crime legislation against Huobi and other platforms. A disposal order dated 16 November 2023 transferred the specified property to the Republic following earlier interlocutory freezes.

https://seylii.org/akn/sc/judgment/scsc/2023/796/eng@2023-11-16

KuCoin, delisted tokens and an unpaid award

The KuCoin dispute is about custody following a delisting, not a classic romance scam.

In November 2023, the Supreme Court granted a provisional seizure of 21 million CoinPoker (CHP) tokens held on KuCoin in proceedings brought by Swiss investor Didier Rabl against Fortunate Icon Limited.

https://seylii.org/akn/sc/judgment/scsc/2023/789/eng@2023-11-08

Journalists who reviewed court papers reported a default judgment of 11 December 2025 declaring Rabl the sole owner of those tokens and ordering three Seychelles-incorporated KuCoin entities to pay more than 2 million USDT plus $10,000 in moral damages. The court, according to those reports, held that unread delisting emails did not extinguish property rights where the original contract contained no forfeiture clause. The Seychelles entities did not appear. By June 2026, Rabl said the award had not been paid. The FSA told Cointelegraph it had received the judgment and that Mek Global Ltd, a KuCoin-linked VASP applicant, had been refused a licence on 4 June 2025 and told to cease business in or from Seychelles.

The December 2025 judgment itself is not among the SeyLII hits retrieved for this article. The account above follows contemporaneous reporting in the documents, not a full, independent reading of the 2025 text.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/kucoin-yet-pay-seychelles-court-order-2m-token-case
https://financefeeds.com/kucoin-faces-2-million-seychelles-court-award-over-delisted-tokens/

Default awards against thin IBCs are easy to obtain and hard to collect. That is the enforcement gap the Rabl case illustrates.

Foreign police, Seychelles wallets

Two 2025 recoveries used a Seychelles-hosted platform without turning on a Seychelles criminal trial.

On 26 May 2026 the Canton of Zurich police and the cantonal prosecutor’s office said they had traced almost 200,000 Swiss francs stolen from a Winterthur-district romance-scam victim to a wallet on a Seychelles-based crypto trading platform. In November 2025, they froze assets worth more than 800,000 francs, moved them to an authority wallet and repaid the victim in full. The official release does not name the exchange.

https://www.zh.ch/de/news-uebersicht/medienmitteilungen/2026/05/260526r_kryptosicherstellung.html
https://www.bluewin.ch/en/news/switzerland/zurich-cantonal-police-seize-crypto-money-3248914.html

In Ghana, the Economic and Organised Crime Office traced an investment fraud targeting Ghanaians and British nationals to wallets on OKX, which the Attorney-General described as Seychelles-based. OKX’s own review flagged more than 1,000 transactions from a single IP address. A High Court order of 27 May 2025 directed the assets to a UK custodian. On 19 November 2025, $15,191,730.13 was paid into EOCO’s exhibit account. Chainalysis later published a case study of the same recovery.

https://citinewsroom.com/2025/12/eoco-uncovers-offshore-crypto-fraud-recovers-over-us15m-ag/
https://www.isd.gov.gh/eoco-recovers-15-19-million-from-chinese-malaysian-crypto-fraud-ring/
https://www.graphic.com.gh/news/general-news/ghana-news-eoco-smashes-online-scam-in-ghana-uk-recovers-15-19m.html
https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/ghana-eoco-uk-nca-blockchain-analysis-case/

Police capacity is not a guarantee

In December 2025, the Seychelles Police Financial Crime Investigation Unit received an ARINSA Award of Excellence for asset-recovery work. Official reporting named the unit’s cryptocurrency team. That is a professional accolade, not a published scoreboard of every token seized.

https://nation.sc/articles/28591/contacts

The limit that still matters

Seychelles is now a place where a victim can obtain a freeze or a declaration if the coins are still on a platform with a local company. Fraud — investment schemes, romance scams, phishing — is the usual predicate. Recovery still depends on blockchain tracing, a live custodian, court compulsion or exchange cooperation, and someone willing to enforce the order.

It does not follow that most stolen crypto with a Seychelles nexus comes back. Huobi’s Seychelles vehicle was struck off and publicly unlicensed. KuCoin-linked licensing was refused. BitMEX is closing under FSA supervision. Awards against companies that no longer have a registered agent or local assets can sit unpaid. Mixers and off-exchange transfers remain the usual dead end.

Official notices: https://fsaseychelles.sc/media-corner/regulatory-updates
Judgments: https://seylii.org/