The SEC's case against Ripple is picking more steam, with both sides filing papers this week to compel the other side to produce documents that will be crucial to the case.
Ripple filed a motion on Friday asking the SEC to reveal whether or not its workers were permitted to trade XRP and other digital assets. The request gave the SEC until September 3rd to respond, according to attorney James K. Filan of Filan LLC, who is following the case between the SEC and Ripple.
The judicial order follows prior talks between Ripple and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on the subject, which resulted in no resolution. The move aims to bolster Ripple's claim that the SEC failed to provide it with adequate notice that selling XRP would result in the sale of an unregistered security.
The motion, filed on behalf of Ripple Labs Inc. and its co-founders Bradley Garlinghouse (Ripple CEO) and Christian A. Larsen (Ripple executive chairman), seeks to establish evidence that the SEC granted its employees clearance to trade Bitcoin, Ether, and XRP. As a result, the motion attempts to show that the SEC has “not established or imposed” any rules prohibiting their employees from trading XRP until January 16, 2018.
Despite the fact that the SEC's response date has yet to arrive, the regulators have moved forward with their lawsuit, filing a motion to force Ripple to "provide relevant video and audio-taped records" of meetings. In a motion filed on Monday, the SEC said that during a deposition earlier this month, they learned of the tapes they were seeking from a "important former Ripple employee."
The SEC's action is unsurprising, given it has been anticipated that they may be approaching the issue from a marketing standpoint rather of a technical one.
The SEC had previously filed a motion to obtain information about Ripple's internal communications. Slack, a messaging and task management platform utilized by businesses and used by Ripple, might be a powerful weapon in the SEC's arsenal. The SEC's marketing strategy is backed up by a footnote in the motion stating that the messages they seek access to are from members of Ripple's marketing team, members of the XRP marketing team, and members of Ripple's financial team.
He goes on to say that these individuals were more interested in whether XRP was “marketed” as a security or stock option in the company to raise funds, rather than whether it was technically a security or not. In a recent analysis, Hogan indicated that the SEC might be willing to give up its fair notice position in order to bring Ripple to justice on the securities marketing charges.
The lawsuit appears to be nearing a conclusion, and some experts anticipate that both parties will reach an agreement soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.