The ongoing legal battle between the SEC and Ripple continues, and the latest development sees the company accusing the United States Securities and Exchange Commission of intentionally utilizing intimidation tactics in an attempt to gain access to sensitive information. Ripple’s lawyers are working tirelessly to ensure that the SEC does not obtain any information on both Ripple and the XRP token from various international regulators.
Ripple asks judge to stop SEC in its tracks
Ripple Chief Executive Officer Brad Garlinghouse, along with Chris Larsen, have requested judge Sarah Netburn to prevent the SEC from getting access to information via foreign regulators whom the SEC is allegedly requesting to act on its behalf.
Both Garlinghouse and Larsen sent a joint letter to the judge, which had been filed on the 16th of April, just a couple of days ago. Furthermore, Ripple lawyers claim that the SEC is acting way beyond its jurisdiction, and as such, has been adamant about discovering information that is outside of the Federal Rules as well as the Hague Convention’s scope through the improper use of the MOU (Memoranda of Understanding) with the aforementioned foreign regulators. The lawyers then added that these regulators would then, on behalf of the SEC, bombard Ripple with requests about various documents and entities that fall under the relevant jurisdictions.
The lawyers also stated that the process involving the MOU would also include a foreign securities regulator who would be expected to assist in the process of discovery. This would then most likely affect the person in charge of receiving the requests, which also includes the company’s international business associates. The lawyers then concluded that with all this in mind, the SEC has indeed resorted to using intimidation tactics to shift the direction of the lawsuit into its favour and that this is an extremely unwarranted act.
SEC responds as Ripple lawyers continue to defend
The lawyers later discovered that the SEC had requested to receive information from nearly 70 third parties all over the world, including requests to various regulators based in countries such as Japan, Singapore and the United Kingdom. ‘This has had an adverse effect on our business and commercial operations abroad’, the lawyers added.
The SEC, on the other hand, has agreed to give Ripple access to the details regarding the requests. However, any communications with these foreign regulators will not be granted. The SEC claimed that this was sensitive information that Ripple was not entitled to, which is ironic because Ripple lawyers claim that the SEC is asking for information that it is not entitled to either. All of this had resulted in the abovementioned letter to the judge, asking her to intervene on Ripple’s behalf.