dailyhodl.com
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is accusing Ripple Labs of harassment, requesting that the court limit the payment giant’s access to internal SEC documents.
The SEC asserts that Ripple is attempting to undermine the regulatory agency’s lawsuit against the fintech firm by highlighting irrelevant SEC documents.
On April 6th, Judge Sarah Netburn granted Ripple access to SEC documents regarding its correspondence and conversations surrounding Ethereum (EHT), BTC, and XRP, the asset whose status as a digital currency is in question.
This week, the SEC filed a motion with the Judge to limit Ripple’s access to said documents, alleging that the firm is attempting to shift attention away from the lawsuit at hand to unrelated SEC comments and actions regarding digital assets.
“The SEC is in the process of complying with the Court’s April 6, 2021 Order, Ex. 1 (the ‘Order’) and has begun reviewing tens of thousands of external emails from the identified custodians for production pursuant to the Order.
However, it has become evident through the meet-and-confer process that Defendants are seeking to ignore the limitations of this Court’s Order and to mire the SEC in indefinite discovery disputes and, if successful, document review…
Defendants’ approach is part of a pattern of gamesmanship with respect to discovery and the following examples show that Defendants do not actually seek relevant evidence, but rather seek to harass the SEC, derail the case’s focus away from its merits, and bog down the SEC with document review.“
Ripple has been on a hot streak of late in its case with the SEC. The firm was not only granted access to the SEC’s internal documents, but the SEC was also denied access to the financial records of Ripple executives Brad Garlinghouse and Chris Larsen.