The seizure of digital tokens looks like an exotic subject: blockchain addresses, exchange platforms, Tether or Ethereum tokens. Look closer and it applies the regime governing criminal seizures and confiscation, reshaped by French Law no. 2024-582 of 24 June 2024, and it tests that regime to its limits. There is no new legal object here, but litigation that has become central to criminal defence strategy, and crypto-assets make its weaknesses more visible than elsewhere.
A ransom in USDT, or criminal seizure in the digital age
The starting point is a striking case decided by the Criminal Division of the French Court of Cassation on 20 May 2026. To secure the release of his father, who had been abducted and held captive, an online-gaming influencer paid a ransom of 1.7 million euros in crypto-assets, Ethereum tokens and more than 952,000 USDT (Tether) tokens, transferred to a blockchain address controlled by the kidnappers. The investigation, opened for extortion, aggravated false imprisonment and money laundering among other offences, traced 131,002 of those tokens to an account hosted on an exchange platform. The investigating judge ordered the seizure of those digital assets, then their return to the civil party; the Investigating Chamber reversed that return; the Court of Cassation quashed its decision.
A ruling on the return of seized digital assets is quashed: since the Law of 24 June 2024, an appeal against an order for the return of seized property (Article 99, paragraph 5, of the Code of Criminal Procedure) lies with the First President of the Court of Appeal, and no longer with the Investigating Chamber. As a jurisdictional statute, it applies with immediate effect.
Read on Légifrance →The essential point lies elsewhere. This case reveals no special regime for crypto-assets. It shows that the digital token slots, with no derogating provision, into the ordinary categories of criminal seizure, and therefore inherits all of their procedural difficulties. A crypto-asset is seizable property like any other. Its intangible nature, its volatility and its traceability on a distributed ledger merely amplify questions already raised by a bank account or a building.
The crypto-asset as ordinary seizable property
The strength of the framework introduced by the Law of 9 July 2010, and expanded through to the reform of 24 June 2024, lies in its flexibility. Special criminal seizures (Articles 706-141 et seq. of the Code of Criminal Procedure) reach a person’s estate as a whole, real property, bank accounts, debts and intangible movable property alike. A token balance credited to an account opened with an exchange platform is treated, in practice, as the seizure of a sum of money or of an intangible right: there was no need to invent a “crypto” regime to capture it.
This absorption into the general law has a decisive consequence for practitioners: every safeguard in seizure litigation, and every ground of nullity, applies identically to crypto-assets. Counsel defending the holder of a seized digital wallet deploys exactly the same weapons as counsel challenging the seizure of a bank account. That is why case law handed down in banking or real-property matters in the first half of 2026 is directly relevant to anyone following crypto-assets and criminal law.
The crux: who hears the appeal against a seizure?
The judgment of 20 May 2026 turns, in reality, neither on the blockchain nor on Tether tokens. It rests on a ground raised by the Court of its own motion, drawn from Article 99, paragraph 5, of the Code of Criminal Procedure as amended by the Law of 24 June 2024. That provision transferred jurisdiction to hear an appeal against an order ruling on an application for the return of seized property: it is no longer the Investigating Chamber but the First President of the Court of Appeal, or the judge he designates, who decides. Being a jurisdictional statute, it applies with immediate effect, including to offences committed before it entered into force. By ruling after 26 June 2024, the Investigating Chamber lacked jurisdiction; its judgment was quashed and the case remitted to the First President.
The lesson reaches far beyond crypto. In every pending seizure case, it must now be verified that the challenge takes the correct route and is addressed to the correct body. The reflex inherited from fifteen years of practice, applying to the Investigating Chamber, today exposes a party to inadmissibility, or to a judgment being quashed for lack of jurisdiction. Crypto-asset seizure, being recent and widely reported, offers the textbook illustration; but the same vigilance is required for the seizure of the humblest account.
Access to the file: adversarial rights are not to be presumed
A second front is illustrated by a judgment of 1 July 2026. In a case concerning fraud on a tax-relief scheme which had given rise to the seizure of eight bank accounts, the Criminal Division held, under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Article 706-153 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, that a third party whose assets are seized must be able to access the documents relating to the seizure being challenged: the contested order, the record of seizure and the prosecution’s application. It is not enough for the judgment to state that the file was lodged with the registry; it must establish effective access and identify the documents on which the court relies.
Seizure of credit balances on bank accounts: the Investigating Chamber cannot rely on the mere statement that the file was lodged with the registry; it must guarantee the appellant third party effective access to the documents relating to the seizure being challenged (Article 6 ECHR and Article 706-153 of the Code of Criminal Procedure).
Read on Légifrance →Transposed to the seizure of a digital wallet, this reasoning is immediately operative. The holder of a seized crypto account, like the holder of the USDT account in the ransom case, is entitled to demand access to the material justifying the measure: traceability of flows on the blockchain, transaction-chain analysis reports, and the evidence linking the seized address to the offence. Here again, crypto does not create the rule. It tests its reach and forces us to ask what the relevant “documents” are when the evidence is technological.
Sale before judgment: the constitutional blind spot
Finally comes the most sensitive question, and probably the most urgent for digital assets: their disposal before judgment. Seized property may be sold before any conviction where its retention is no longer justified or proves too costly, the proceeds being deposited and, where appropriate, returned. For crypto-assets whose value can swing by tens of percent within days, that power is explosive: selling too early harms an owner who is ultimately acquitted; waiting too long may destroy the value seized.
Now, by a judgment of 1 July 2026, the Criminal Division, sitting in section formation under the presidency of the First President, referred to the Constitutional Council a priority preliminary ruling on constitutionality (QPC) concerning Article 706-152 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, the provision governing the pre-judgment disposal of seized real property. The ground held to be serious: since the Law of 24 June 2024 transferred jurisdiction over such challenges to the First President, no legislative provision guarantees that a hearing will be held before that judge. The provision is liable to deprive the right to an effective judicial remedy of legal safeguards (Article 16 of the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen). By contrast, the Court declined to refer the ground based on interference with the right to property, early sale pursuing the objectives of the sound administration of justice and the proper use of public funds, with the deposited proceeds returned in the event of a favourable outcome.
Pre-judgment disposal of seized real property (Article 706-152 of the Code of Criminal Procedure): referral of the QPC based on the right to an effective judicial remedy, no hearing being guaranteed before the First President since the transfer of jurisdiction effected by the Law of 24 June 2024. The ground based on the right to property was not referred.
Read on Légifrance →The Constitutional Council’s decision is now awaited. It will matter just as much for crypto-assets: if the pre-judgment disposal of a building, without a guaranteed hearing, offends the right to an effective remedy, what is to be said of the sale of a volatile digital wallet decided in the same conditions? The legislature of 2024 reformed this regime without organising its procedure, and crypto cases are the first to feel the consequences.
Seizure is only a stage: the horizon of confiscation
It must never be forgotten that seizure is only a protective measure, directed towards an end: confiscation, a penalty provided for by Article 131-21 of the Criminal Code, which reaches the instrument, the proceeds or the object of the offence, and even the convicted person’s entire estate in the most serious offences. The whole logic of the framework is organised around that prospect: placing assets under judicial control, management by the Agency for the Recovery and Management of Seized and Confiscated Assets (AGRASC), possible disposal, and return where confiscation is ultimately not ordered.
For crypto-assets, this end raises unprecedented questions of custody (who holds the private keys? how is a wallet secured under judicial control?) and of valuation (at what date is the confiscated value to be assessed?). Legally, however, the framework remains that of the general law: seize to secure, confiscate to punish, return if no penalty is imposed. The digital token does not escape that triad.
Crypto as an accelerator
At a time when crypto-asset seizure is readily presented as a new frontier, the truth is more prosaic and, for practitioners, more useful: there is no special law of crypto seizure. There is a law of seizures and confiscation, recast by the Law of 24 June 2024, whose tensions crypto-assets reveal with particular clarity: the transfer of appeal routes to the First President, the requirement of effective access to the file, and constitutional uncertainty over pre-judgment disposal.
Three decisions from the first half of 2026 settle the current position: the “crypto” quashing of 20 May, the judgment of 1 July on access to the file and the QPC referred the same day. Following them closely is how one acquires the means to defend effectively, tomorrow, the holder of a bank account as much as the holder of a digital wallet.
Frequently asked questions
Can a crypto-asset be seized in French criminal proceedings?
Yes in principle, but legal possibility does not guarantee practical feasibility. Article 706-154 of the Code of Criminal Procedure expressly permits the seizure of crypto-assets, within the meaning of Article L. 54-10-1 of the Monetary and Financial Code which since 1 July 2026 refers to the European MiCA Regulation, where they are deposited with an institution authorised to hold accounts in them. That is the simplest scenario: the decision is served on the service provider, which freezes the assets. It is precisely the pattern of the USDT tokens held on an exchange platform in the case decided on 20 May 2026. The assets must, however, actually be in the hands of an identifiable intermediary subject to French law. Failing that, seizure requires the authorities to obtain access to the assets themselves, which is by no means automatic.
What happens if the crypto-assets are held on a hardware wallet?
A widespread confusion must first be dispelled: crypto-assets are not “inside” the hardware wallet (Ledger, Trezor or equivalent). The device holds only the private keys that allow them to be dealt with; the assets themselves remain recorded on the blockchain. The device may be taken during a search like any tangible movable property, but seizing it gives no access in itself to the funds, absent the PIN code or the recovery phrase. Investigators may then formally require its disclosure: refusing to hand over the secret decryption key of a means of cryptology is an offence under Article 434-15-2 of the Criminal Code: three years’ imprisonment and a fine of 270,000 euros, raised to five years and 450,000 euros where disclosure would have made it possible to prevent an offence or limit its effects. That provision was held constitutional (Constitutional Council, 30 March 2018, decision no. 2018-696 QPC). But punishing refusal is not the same as obtaining access: where the recovery phrase is simply memorised, no physical constraint can extract it. On this point, see our analysis of disclosing an unlock code to investigators.
In what other situations can a seizure meet a practical obstacle?
Several configurations limit the effectiveness of the measure: self-custody with no physical medium, where the recovery phrase is memorised or placed out of reach; multi-signature wallets, whose unlocking requires several keys held by different people, sometimes outside France; platforms established in an uncooperative State, where seizure then depends on the success of a request for international mutual legal assistance; decentralised protocols, with no legally identifiable operator on whom a decision can be served; privacy-enhanced assets and mixing services, which break traceability and complicate the attribution of funds; the speed of dissipation, since assets can be transferred within minutes; and finally funds locked by a contractual mechanism, whose release depends on the protocol itself. These obstacles are practical rather than legal: they do not affect the validity of the seizure ordered, but they condition its enforcement. As regards custody, Article R. 54-8 of the Code of Criminal Procedure now authorises AGRASC to use the digital-asset custody service of the Caisse des dépôts et consignations, a sign that the framework is organising itself as practice settles.
Which court hears a challenge to a seizure or an application for return?
Since Law no. 2024-582 of 24 June 2024, an appeal against an order ruling on an application for the return of seized property lies with the First President of the Court of Appeal (or the judge he designates), and no longer with the Investigating Chamber (Article 99, paragraph 5, of the Code of Criminal Procedure). The Court of Cassation applied this with immediate effect on 20 May 2026. Applying to the wrong court exposes a party to inadmissibility, or to the judgment being quashed for lack of jurisdiction.
Can seized crypto-assets be sold before judgment?
Disposal before judgment is possible where retention of the property is no longer justified or proves too costly, the proceeds being deposited and capable of being returned. The applicable procedure is, however, the subject of a priority preliminary ruling on constitutionality referred on 1 July 2026 (Article 706-152 of the Code of Criminal Procedure), on the ground that no hearing is guaranteed before the First President. The Constitutional Council’s decision is awaited and will be of direct interest for digital assets, which are volatile by nature.
Which documents can be demanded in order to challenge a seizure?
A third party whose assets are seized is entitled to access the documents relating to the seizure being challenged: the contested order, the record of seizure and the prosecution’s application, together with the material on which the court bases its decision (Cass. crim., 1 July 2026, no. 25-84.539). In crypto matters, that includes traceability of flows on the blockchain and the analyses linking the seized address to the offence.
The author
Mehdy Kadri is a member of the Paris Bar. He practises at Cabinet Kadri Avocat (Paris 8th) in general and serious crime, business crime, tax crime, cybercrime and crypto-assets, media law and human rights. He publishes regularly in AJ Pénal (Dalloz) and the Encyclopédie Doctrine.
This analysis forms part of the firm’s practice in business crime, criminal procedure, and cybercrime and crypto-assets. It does not constitute legal advice and cannot replace tailored guidance on an individual matter.
