Eye on Cover Story
Wilsons Auctions... From Bling To Bitcoin Peter Johnston admits that when Wilsons Auctions first branched out into police forces and government work seven years ago or so, he didn’t realise how much it was going to change the face of the business.
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he company, locally owned and with its operations base in Mallusk, had already grown to become one of the biggest independent auction houses around the UK and had successfully expanded from its Northern Ireland base to the Republic of Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England, but that growth had been on the back of its core business back then.... the sale by auction of motor vehicles, plant and machinery. “Now we’re working for a number of big government departments and we’re working on behalf of a lot of the UK’s police forces when it comes to proceeds of crime asset disposal sales and have returned over £100 million back to the exchequer,” says the Group Operations Director at Wilsons Auctions. “In fact, we’ve become the acknowledged experts in the sale of criminal assets. Our Head of Asset Recovery, Aidan Larkin, travels the world talking to government representatives and police forces about how we can turn the proceeds of crime anywhere in the world into cash reserves for the country in question.”
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Aidan Larkin takes up the story. Belfast-based but not often in his home city these days, Larkin has been asked to talk at a series of major conferences on asset disposal all over the world, and his travels have taken him as far afield as the USA, Malaysia, elsewhere in the Far East, and – most recently – to Malta and Kosovo. In fact, he reckons that he’s set foot in somewhere between 60 and 70 countries over the past couple of years, which makes for a lot of Air Miles. But both Larkin and Peter Johnston are quick to add that Wilsons Auctions clear expertise in the disposal of criminal assets has led to another development that no one at the company could have seen coming over the horizon. The company recently staged its very first auction of seized bitcoin, the cryptocurrency that has rapidly become the currency of choice for criminals all over the world. The origins of the historic auction lie in Belgium. Over 100 Bitcoins were seized in 2015 by Belgian police in a major drug trafficking case. Two Belgian nationals were
suspected of selling drugs on the dark net. Transactions were paid by cryptocurrency and transferred to currency wallets found on a computer of the prime suspect. “We were chosen to auction the assets ahead of companies in the Netherlands, France and Belgium, thanks to our expertise in managing and selling complicated seized assets across the globe,” says Aidan Larkin. “The auction was a big success for us, and it’s helped to prove our view that a live public auction – with online and physical bids – is the most open and transparent way to sell off these assets. In the event, we received more than 6,300 bids from bidders located in 97 different countries. Wilsons Auctions didn’t just auction the cryptocurrency. It offers a full service – as with other criminal assets – that include recovery, storage and the sale of assets. In the past, more tangible assets have ranged from properties and luxury cars to watches, jewellery, yachts and – in at least one case – horses.
