The court has reportedly given the U.S. SEC until Sept. 3 to respond to
Ripple’s motion to compel the authority to provide data on SEC
employees’ XRP holdings.
Ripple has filed a motion to compel the United States Securities and
Exchange Commission, or SEC, to disclose its internal cryptocurrency
trading policies as part of the ongoing legal battle with the securities
regulator.
James Filan, an attorney closely following the SEC's case against Ripple, shared a new motion document seeking to bring clarity whether the SEC permitted its own employees to trade XRP, which, as per the regulator’s allegations, is an unregistered security.
Filed
on Aug. 27 on behalf of several defendants, including Ripple Labs,
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, and Ripple executive chairman Chris
Larsen, the motion asks the U.S. District Court for the Southern
District of New York to compel the SEC to produce data on its trading
policies for governing digital assets.
The motion seeks to compel
the SEC to provide anonymized documents reflecting “trading preclearance
decisions,” not only for XRP but also Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH).
“Defendants also seek certifications concerning SEC employees’ XRP
holdings — again, either with redactions of personal information or in
aggregate form,” the motion action reads.
The defendants
emphasized that their previous efforts to obtain the information from
the SEC have failed so far. “We met and conferred with the SEC on this
issue on July 8, July 15, Aug. 18 and Aug. 25, without progress,” the
motion noted.
According to Filan, the court has given the SEC until Sept. 3 to respond to the latest motion. The attorney added that the order was a “text-only order,” meaning that no separate, written order was filed.
Related: SEC wants ‘terabytes’ of Slack communications from Ripple
Ripple’s
latest legal efforts come as the community anticipates an upcoming
virtual meeting with the SEC to discuss the firm’s pending motion to
compel the regulator to produce a pack of documents that defendants
believe are relevant to their “fair notice” defense. Magistrate Judge
Sarah Netburn of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of
New York scheduled the online meeting for Aug. 31.
As reported previously, the SEC initiated a major legal action against Ripple in December 2020, alleging that XRP was a $1.3-billion unregistered securities offering. Last month, Judge Netburn ruled in favor of Ripple Labs by allowing the deposition of the former director of the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance, William Hinman. The SEC’s exec is known for his 2018 speech suggesting that Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market value, was not a security.
source link : https://cointelegraph.com/news/ripple-files-motion-to-expose-xrp-holdings-of-sec-employees
