Dublin District Court heard that following a “complex” investigation by the Dublin East Garda economic crime unit, with the cooperation of Europol, and police from Germany, Spain, Switzerland and the UK, officers arrested the unemployed couple on Tuesday. They searched his flat in Avoca Road, Blackrock.

The pair previously ran a cryptocurrency trading business and moved from the Philippines to Ireland last year as part of an “immigration investment scheme” after donating €400,000 to a charity, ICARE Housing CLG.

The couple faced bail objections during separate hearings before Judge John Campbell on Saturday.

Detective Garda Steven Dunican and Barry Cusack expressed concern about the risk of flight or potentially disposing of evidence.

The alleged offenses fall under the Criminal Justice (Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing) Act, which can lead to a 14-year sentence, but police expect the DPP to authorize more serious charges.

Suspicion of investment fraud

Detectives told Judge Campbell that on March 9, officers from a Garda economic crime unit received information from German police about suspected investment fraud.

A German national transferred €10,000 from his bank to a Paytend digital bank account of Mr. Wang.

Detective Garda Cusack made inquiries with Paytend regarding Jixu Wang and it was alleged that the accused had used his Chinese passport number on the account.

Garda Cusack identified 1,894 “unusual transactions” which were transferred into the account amounting to €5,043,705 received from 622 different Iban numbers (International Bank Account Numbers) over a five-month period between July 2 and November 9 last year.

It was alleged that there were other unusual transactions between another Paytend account held by his wife, Ye Wang, who is a qualified accountant.

Her Paytend account allegedly received 733 transactions valued at just over €2.1 million from 321 different bank accounts between September 11, 2023 and January 12 this year.

The court heard that GPS locations were obtained for login details for both Paytend accounts, which corresponded to their address.

The unemployed couple had accounts of over 7 million euros

Detectives said both were unemployed but had just over €7m in their accounts.

Gardaí, including the Criminal Assets Bureau, identified €14.7 million in cryptocurrency wallets, of which €4.4 million were seized or frozen by the investigation team.

Their apartment was raided, resulting in the alleged seizure of €20,000, gold coins and five envelopes with “seed words” to access a cryptocurrency wallet. Documents, phones and laptops were also recovered.

Ms Wang was alleged to have helped create fake documents to set up “money mule” accounts, but she denied knowing she was part of a crime.

Judge Campbell said they were presumed innocent.

However, he took into account the evidence and grounds for bail objections raised by Garda witnesses and the couple’s lack of assets here.

He described their ties to Ireland as “tenuous”.

They were remanded in custody to appear again on Wednesday.