Yvonne Tracey: Former Post Office worker to challenge Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey at general election
A woman who spent more than three decades working for the Post Office is planning to stand against Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey – a former postal affairs minister – at the next general election.
Yvonne Tracey, who said ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office had made her “very sad” and “very angry”, lives in Sir Ed’s constituency of Kingston and Surbiton in southwest London.
The 68-year-old grandmother said she cannot allow him to “stand again unchallenged”.
Hundreds of sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses were wrongly held responsible for accounting errors created by faulty software.
Those affected by the Horizon IT scandal are “still not hearing the truth”, Ms Tracey told Sky News.
They “still haven’t got justice” and “haven’t got answers”, she said. “Some of them haven’t had their names cleared. I just felt I had to do something to help them.”
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‘I got sectioned because of scandal’
Sir Ed, who was postal minister between 2010 and 2012 during the coalition government, refused to meet sub-postmaster Alan Bates, whom the ITV drama is named after, saying in a short letter that it “wouldn’t serve any purpose”.
According to Ms Tracey, a sub-postmaster who ran a post office in Sir Ed’s constituency lost his home, his business and attempted to take his own life on more than one occasion after being caught up in the scandal.
She said: “He tried three times to get in touch with Sir Ed and every time he was turned away, refused or ignored.”
The Liberal Democrats said the sub-postmaster lived outside Sir Ed’s constituency and parliamentary convention meant he was therefore unable to get involved in the case.
Asked if the Post Office scandal would still be on people’s minds during the general election campaign, Ms Tracey said she thought it would.
“I think people are so angry over this. I’d love to think by the time the election came it was all done – they’d all have their compensation and be living happily after.
“But we all know it’s not going to happen that quick. It’s been two decades so far.”
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‘I knew I hadn’t stolen any money’
Ms Tracey was elected to Kingston Council in 2022 and represents the local residents group.
The main political parties in Kingston previously accused the group of Islamophobia and “divisive campaigning”.
But Ms Tracey said the allegations “really annoyed” her and had led to legal action.
Davey did later meet Mr Bates
Sir Ed did later meet Mr Bates and was the first minister on public record to do so.
It is understood he then asked his officials to follow up on the concerns raised by the sub-postmaster at their meeting.
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Post Office tax claim is ‘unlawful’
Speaking previously to Sky News, Sir Ed said: “I wish I’d known then what we all know now. The Post Office was lying on an industrial scale to me and other ministers.
“When I met Alan Bates and listened to his concerns, I put those concerns to officials in my department, to the Post Office and to the National Federation of Postmasters and it’s clear they all were lying to me.”
Dave Penman, the general secretary of the FDA union for civil servants, branded Sir Ed’s comments “outrageous” and said they were an “act of desperation from a former minister trying to save his own skin”.
“Ed Davey goes beyond what is reasonable to expect from a former minister,” he told Sky News. “If he’s going to repeat this he needs to back up his accusations.”
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They made ‘me look like a criminal’
‘I was taken out in handcuffs’
Arfan Aslam can remember the pride he felt when he became a sub-postmaster, writes Sky News correspondent Shingi Mararike.
In his early 20s, he was continuing a family tradition by running a local business. “At the time I was over the moon, because it was like a professional job – it was like a life-changing opportunity,” he said.
Within weeks, that dream had turned into a nightmare. He was arrested and escorted out of the post office in front of his younger brother, who was working with him at the time.
“They’ve taken me out in handcuffs, marched me out of my own post office, in front of these people,” he said.
“Made me look like a criminal. I let my mum and dad down and everything. It broke my heart.”
Arfan said life did not get any easier for him when he left prison. The father-of-three was forced to repay more than £53,000 while he struggled to find work and claimed benefits.
His close-knit family helped him pay off the debts, and now with the Horizon scandal making headlines, he will soon be pursuing compensation, while hoping to have his conviction overturned.
“Any bit of money would help, but we cannot take away the pain and the 22 years of suffering,” he said.
“No bit of money can change that.”
The new trade tariffs announced by US President Donald Trump may place added pressure on the Bitcoin mining ecosystem both domestically and globally, according to one industry executive.
While the US is home to Bitcoin (BTC) mining manufacturing firms such as Auradine, it’s still “not possible to make the whole supply chain, including materials, US-based,” Kristian Csepcsar, chief marketing officer at BTC mining tech provider Braiins, told Cointelegraph.
On April 2, Trump announced sweeping tariffs, imposing a 10% tariff on all countries that export to the US and introducing “reciprocal” levies targeting America’s key trading partners.
Community members have debated the potential effects of the tariffs on Bitcoin, with some saying their impact has been overstated, while others see them as a significant threat.
Tariffs compound existing mining challenges
Csepcsar said the mining industry is already experiencing tough times, pointing to key indicators like the BTC hashprice.
Hashprice — a measure of a miner’s daily revenue per unit of hash power spent to mine BTC blocks — has been on the decline since 2022 and dropped to all-time lows of $50 for the first time in 2024.
According to data from Bitbo, the BTC hashprice was still hovering around all-time low levels of $53 on March 30.
Bitcoin hashprice since late 2013. Source: Bitbo
“Hashprice is the key metric miners follow to understand their bottom line. It is how many dollars one terahash makes a day. A key profitability metric, and it is at all-time lows, ever,” Csepcsar said.
He added that mining equipment tariffs were already increasing under the Biden administration in 2024, and cited comments from Summer Meng, general manager at Chinese crypto mining supplier Bitmars.
Source: Summer Meng
“But they keep getting stricter under Trump,” Csepcsar added, referring to companies such as the China-based Bitmain — the world’s largest ASIC manufacturer — which is subject to the new tariffs.
Trump’s latest measures include a 34% additional tariff on top of an existing 20% levy for Chinese mining imports. In response, China reportedly imposed its own retaliatory tariffs on April 4.
BTC mining firms to “lose in the short term”
Csepcsar also noted that cutting-edge chips for crypto mining are currently massively produced in countries like Taiwan and South Korea, which were hit by new 32% and 25% tariffs, respectively.
“It will take a decade for the US to catch up with cutting-edge chip manufacturing. So again, companies, including American ones, lose in the short term,” he said.
Source: jmhorp
Csepcsar also observed that some countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States region, including Russia and Kazakhstan, have been beefing up mining efforts and could potentially overtake the US in hashrate dominance.
Related: Bitcoin mining using coal energy down 43% since 2011 — Report
“If we continue to see trade war, these regions with low tariffs and more favorable mining conditions can see a major boom,” Csepcsar warned.
As the newly announced tariffs potentially hurt Bitcoin mining both globally and in the US, it may become more difficult for Trump to keep his promise of making the US the global mining leader.
Trump’s stance on crypto has shifted multiple times over the years. As his administration embraces a more pro-crypto agenda, it remains to be seen how the latest economic policies will impact his long-term strategy for digital assets.
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Cryptocurrency exchange OKX is under renewed regulatory scrutiny in Europe after Maltese authorities issued a major fine for violations of Anti-Money Laundering (AML) laws.
Malta’s Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit (FIAU) fined Okcoin Europe — OKX’s Europe-based subsidiary — 1.1 million euros ($1.2 million) after detecting multiple AML failures on the platform in the past, the authority announced on April 3.
While admitting that OKX has significantly improved its AML policies in the past 18 months, the authority “could not ignore” its past compliance failures from 2023, “some of which were deemed to be serious and systematic,” the FIAU notice said.
OKX was among the first crypto exchanges to receive a license under Europe’s new Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation via its Malta hub in January 2025.
The news of the $1.2 million penalty in Malta came after Bloomberg in March reported that European Union regulators were probing OKX for laundering $100 million in funds from the Bybit hack.
Bybit CEO Ben Zhou previously claimed that OKX’s Web3 proxy allowed hackers to launder about $100 million, or 40,233 Ether (ETH), from the $1.5 billion hack that occurred in February.
This is a developing story, and further information will be added as it becomes available.
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Authorities in the US state of Massachusetts continue targeting unlawful cryptocurrency market practices, with a local court fining crypto financial services firm CLS Global.
A federal court in Boston on April 2 sentenced CLS Global on criminal charges related to fraudulent manipulation of crypto trading volume, according to an announcement from the Massachusetts US Attorney’s Office.
In addition to a $428,059 fine, the court prohibited CLS Global from offering services in the US for a probation period of three years.
CLS Global, a crypto market maker registered in the United Arab Emirates, in January pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit market manipulation and one count of wire fraud.
CLS agreed to manipulate the FBI’s “trap token” NexFundAI
The charges against CLS Global followed an undercover law enforcement operation involving NexFundAI, a token created by the FBI as part of a sting operation in May 2024.
CLS Global was among at least three firms that took the FBI’s bait and agreed to provide “market maker services” for NexFundAI, including a fraudulent scheme to attract investors to purchase the token.
In October 2024, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced fraud charges against CLS and its employee, Andrey Zhorzhes. The US securities regulator also filed complaints against two other NexFundAI manipulators, Hong Kong-linked ZM Quant Investment and Russia-linked Gotbit Consulting.
CLS Global’s profile
According to CLS Global CEO Filipp Veselov, the company was founded in 2017 to fill in a “huge gap in the market for high-quality market-making solutions and trading consulting.”
Prior to CLS, Veselov worked at the Russian cryptocurrency exchange platform Latoken, which is advertised as a “global digital asset exchange” and has about 370,000 followers on X.
The CLS team also includes chief revenue officer Pavel Singaevskii, who previously served as sales manager at Stex, a crypto platform that reportedly ceased operations without warning in 2023.
Source: CLS Global
According to CLS Global’s X page, the platform continues operating and has more than 110,000 followers at the time of publication.
How much wash trading is in crypto?
Wash trading is an illegal practice involving artificially inflating trading volume by repeatedly buying and selling the same asset, generating a misleading perception of demand.
According to a January 2025 report by the US blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis, the crypto market has at least $2.6 billion in estimated wash traded volumes, or just about 2% of total daily crypto trading volumes, as reported by CoinGecko.
Estimated wash trade volume in crypto. Source: Chainalysis
Related: Russian Gotbit founder strikes $23M plea deal with US prosecutors
Some studies indicate that wash trading makes up a bigger share of the crypto market.
In 2022, the US National Bureau of Economic Research reported that illegal wash trading may account for as much as 70% of average trading volumes on unregulated exchanges.
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