In Brief:
- Ripple defendants have fired back with a motion to expose the XRP holdings of SEC employees.
- The order gives the SEC until Sept 3rd to respond to their motion.
Amidst the ongoing power struggle with the US SEC, Ripple has filed a motion to compel the SEC to disclose its internal cryptocurrency trading policies.
James Filan revealed Ripple’s new motion demanding the SEC to produce documents related to its own employees’ XRP holdings. The legal order comes as a response to four previous meetings Ripple has had with the SEC that did not progress into anything.
The motion is filed on behalf of Ripple Labs Inc., Bradley Garlinghouse, and Christian A. Larsen. The motion asks to gather “anonymized documents reflecting [the SEC’s] trading preclearance decisions with regard to XRP, bitcoin, and ether.”
In the motion, Ripple demonstrates that the SEC had “not adopted or imposed” any rules restricting their employees from trading in crypto until January 16th, 2018. This would, according to the company, be in line with the commission’s previous views on digital assets not being securities up until that point. Nevertheless, this left SEC employees a time window to collect XRP.
“At all times from 2013 until at least January 19, 2018, SEC employees were free to buy, sell and hold XRP without any restriction by the SEC.” 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.
The SEC in 2020 had initiated a legal action against Ripple alleging that XRP was a $1.3-billion unregistered securities offering. Last month, Judge Netburn ruled in favor of Ripple Labs. He allowed the deposition of the former director of the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance, William Hinman
