USDT issuer Tether has requested that the law firm Roche Freedman be terminated as counsel from Bitfinex and Tether’s class-action lawsuit. This request comes after Kyle Roche filed a motion to be removed as counsel from the case as well.
Elliot Greenfield of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, the law firm representing Tether and Bitfinex presented a court order requesting that Roche’s law firm be removed from the case completely.
They also requested that Roche’s firm certify that they’ve returned or destroyed all defendant-issued documents and have not shared them with any third-party, including Ava Labs.
Right before this request, Roche himself also submitted a motion to withdraw from the Tether class action lawsuit. Tether’s lawyers, Greenfield said that the withdrawal of Roche “does little if anything to address the serious issues regarding the potential misuse of discovery.”
They further said that “even if he is no longer counsel of record, he would still have access to discovery materials, would retain the ability to direct the conduct of other lawyers at his firm, and would profit from any potential recovery in this lawsuit.”
A recent CryptoLeaks expose alleged that Roche had a secret pact to “harm” Ava Labs competitors in exchange for AVAX tokens and Ava Labs equity.
Read Also: Ava Labs CEO & Kyle Roche Responds to Crypto Leaks Allegations
Greenfield said “He[Roche] states that he is Ava Lab’s ‘crypto expert’ because he ‘sue[s] half the companies in the space’ and ’know[s] where this market is going’ because he has ‘seen the insides of every single crypto company.”
They raise serious concerns that Kyle Roche may be “abusing the discovery process” and “misusing information” he learns through litigation.
Greenfield has also stressed the need for the documents to be repressed as they contain confidential and competitively sensitive information about Tether and Bitfinex. The information “if disclosed, would threaten the privacy and security of Defendants and their customers,” he further said.
