The judge in the Brison case acknowledged he is not an expert on cryptocurrency as he sought to determine whether Brison received dollar transfers as payment for digital assets or as direct bribes. Brison corrected both the judge and the prosecution on several points, explaining that he trades in Binance Coin and other cryptocurrencies, not only Bitcoin. He noted Bitcoin Cash is the most popular in St. Maarten, and the video with his St. Kitts-based co-defendant was made to illustrate his involvement rather than to claim exclusive promotion of Bitcoin. He also said that the presence of Bitcoin acceptance at various stores and ATMs on Frontstreet and Backstreet shows this activity is already lawful and not contingent on his legislation.
Brison testified that he earned money through over-the-counter cryptocurrency trading, clarifying that the dollar transfers were payments for private digital assets sold. OTC trades involve direct transactions between individuals outside public exchanges; buyers transfer dollars to his account and he delivers the corresponding crypto. He explained that he sometimes used Apple Gift Card codes as an informal method of transferring value in crypto transactions, providing practical settlement options during OTC trades. He stressed that these dealings were part of his private crypto trading and not gifts or benefits connected to his role as a parliamentarian, and he provided a wallet address that matched transactions with his co-defendants on his Melkar account.
The defense highlighted serious errors in the prosecution’s wallet analysis, including the publication of private keys in a criminal file, which creates security risks. They pointed to a balance discrepancy where a wallet claimed to hold USD 127 showed USD 0.00 on verification, suggesting the analysis may be unreliable or that the wrong address was linked. They argued that proper due diligence would have included extracting relevant wallet addresses, verifying balances and full histories, and documenting the methodology for reproducibility. The defense emphasized the broader principle that criminal procedure in the Dutch-Caribbean system requires objective investigations that consider exonerating evidence, noting that investigators had access to the seized data but gave limited attention to it and relied on broad assumptions about blockchain transactions.
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