Ripple CEO, Brad Garlinghouse and co-founder, Chris Larsen, filed a motion yesterday, requesting the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigate international cryptocurrency exchanges. The action from the Ripple bosses is expected to deal a fatal blow to the SEC’s charges.
The motion requests documents from 15 exchanges including iFinex, Bitforex, Bithumb, Bitlish, BitMart, AscendEX (formerly Bitmax), Bitrue Singapore, Bitstamp, Coinbene, HitBTC, Huobi Global, Korbit, OKEx, Upbit Singapore, and ZB Network Technology.
The SEC amended its complaint against Ripple and the firm’s executives in February, alleging their sales of XRP suppressed the crypto asset’s price. The complaint also accuses the executives of misleading public investors while offloading billions of dollars worth of XRP.
The SEC’s amended charge against Ripple accuses Brad Garlinghouse and Chis Larsen of selling XRP to “public investors” located “all over the world,” with the SEC seeking disgorgement from Ripple’s executives based on the sales.
Ripple’s executives, as expected, denied the SEC’s allegations stating that they did not violate Section 5 of the 1933 Securities Act, emphasizing that Section 5 specifically prohibits the domestic sale of securities without a registration statement. The ripple executives’ legal representation countered the charges by stating that their XRP sales were conducted on foreign exchanges and thus outside of the SEC’s jurisdiction. They stated:
“In the case of transactions conducted on such foreign trading platforms, both the offers of XRP and the sales of XRP occurred on the books and records of the respective platforms, and therefore geographically outside the United States. The SEC’s failure to allege domestic offers and sales should be fatal to its claims.”
Ripple is confident that the exchanges and related entities that are listed on its new motion “possess unique documents and information” regarding Ripple’s legal battle with the SEC, specifically concerning “the process by which transactions in XRP allegedly conducted by the Individual Defendants on foreign digital asset trading platforms were conducted.”
The filing comes just days after a significant blow was dealt to the SEC’s case against Ripple, with the court rejecting the SEC’s bid to access communications between Ripple and its legal counsel.
Ripple’s native cryptocurrency, XRP, is currently trading at $1.04, gaining 1.53% in the last 24 hours, as of the time of writing this report.
