Ripple has decided to involve Binance in its lawsuit against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over a recent filing on behalf of CEO, Brad Garlinghouse.
According to reports, Garlinghouse's legal team apparently requested documents "relevant to the case and not obtainable through other means" from Binance Holdings Limited, the Cayman Islands-based subsidiary of the large crypto exchange.
Essentially, the Ripple CEO's lawyers are arguing that the offers and sales that the SEC is challenging, did not occur in the United States and therefore are not subject to the law that the SEC is invoking.
That's why, to prove this theory, Binance gets involved. Specifically, the crypto exchange should be required to provide such evidence, as government institutions such as the State Department and the Hague Convention and the Central Authority of the Cayman Islands have been involved.
"Mr. Garlinghouse seeks foreign discovery based on his good faith belief that [Binance Holdings Limited] possesses unique documents and information regarding this case, and in particular, regarding the process by which XRP transactions allegedly conducted by Mr. Garlinghouse on foreign digital asset trading platforms were conducted."
It comes as the SEC accuses Ripple's CEO of selling more than 357 million XRP on "global" crypto trading platforms to investors "around the world." Now Garlinghouse's lawyers, are invoking the law to refute that claim.
"As the SEC knows, Mr. Garlinghouse's XRP sales were mostly made on digital asset trading platforms outside the United States [...] the discovery that Mr. Garlinghouse seeks will be relevant to show that the offers and sales that the SEC challenges did not occur in this country and are not subject to the law that the SEC has invoked in this case."
The Ripple-SEC lawsuit and the involvement of Binance
The U.S. agency that oversees financial markets, the SEC had filed the lawsuit against Ripple, last December 2020, finally taking it to court.
In addition to CEO Garlinghouse, the lawsuit also sees former CEO Christian Larsen and the entire Ripple Labs Inc. company. The accusation was that they issued XRP security as an unregistered security offering, worth $1.3 billion. And, in the specific case of Garlinghouse and Larsen, the indictment implicates them for making unregistered personal sales of XRP totaling about $600 million.
From a technical legal standpoint, according to the SEC, the defendants allegedly violated the registration provisions of the Securities Act of 1933.
Now, with Binance's involvement, Garlinghouse would be able to prove that the application of that law cannot be carried out in this case and get rid once and for all of the accusations made directly against him.
At the same time, the price of XRP seems to start this August 2021 at $0.75. While the market capitalization, despite the decline due to the present situation of the company and also the entry of new, more innovative players in the crypto market, sees it placed in sixth place. XRP still holds a 2.5% dominance in the total crypto market, with an impressive $35 billion market cap.
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