Thanks to a string of positive legal developments, XRP’s recovery on the charts, and the alt’s relisting by a few exchanges, optimism in the community is as high as it has ever been. And yet, the ongoing lawsuit between the United States SEC and Ripple Labs shows no signs of abating at the moment.
In what is the latest salvo between the two, the defendants have now responded to the agency’s letter to them, a letter which “for the first time, disclosed the full breadth of the MOU requests they sent around the world.”
In the aforementioned response, Ripple Labs’ counsels took issue with quite a few points the SEC made. For starters, the defendants alleged misrepresentation on the question of how many entities and individuals the SEC was seeking discovery from, with the defendants asserting that the agency will be leveraging MOUs to do the same.
According to Ripple Labs, of the 30 different entities and individuals, “more than 20 of the MOU targets reside in jurisdictions where local regulators have determined that XRP is not a security (Japan, UK, and Singapore).” The SEC’s discovery requests, the blockchain firm alleged, serve these entities with compulsory process through MOUs into which “the defendants and the court will have no visibility.”
The aforementioned point is an extension of an argument raised by Ripple’s counsels on the question of the SEC’s discovery motions. At the time, the defendants had argued that the SEC was “deploying extra-judicial tactics that are not available to Defendants or other litigants and should not be available to the SEC here.”
The letter added,
“…. the compulsory process served on those foreign entities and individuals by foreign regulators seeks incredibly burdensome and extensive documents, including documents the SEC can get or has already obtained from Defendants.”
Finally, the defendants also opposed the agency’s contentions that they violated privilege by sharing FCA cover letter under seal with the Court. According to the defendants’ counsels, however, the SEC failed to assert any claim of privilege when it produced those letters to Ripple.
The timing of this development is interesting, especially since as the aforementioned letter highlighted, the defendants were preparing for Judge Netburn to take up the MOU issue during the telephonic conference on the 30th of April after their first reply was filed.