In brief
- As part of its case against Ripple, the SEC subpoenaed CEO Brad Garlinghouse and Executive Chairman Chris Larsen, asking for personal financial records.
- In a letter, lawyers for Garlinghouse and Larsen say the subpoenas should be quashed.
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse and Executive Chairman Chris Larsen are asking a court to deny the SEC access to their personal financial records.
As part of an ongoing legal action against Ripple, the company behind the cryptocurrency XRP, the SEC is after bank statements and other records going back eight years. In a letter filed yesterday with the Southern District Court in New York, lawyers for Garlinghouse and Larsen are asking the SEC to retract subpoenas sent to six different banks, which directly ask for the executive’s personal finances.
The letter characterizes the court’s request as a “wholly inappropriate overreach.”
“The SEC is not entitled to troll through the Individual Defendants’ detailed personal financial records solely on the pretext that it has to prove that they — like virtually every other living person — would view making money as a positive thing,” reads the letter.
The SEC first announced legal action against Ripple back in December, alleging that the company’s sales of XRP were actually unregistered securities offerings. In its complaint, the SEC said Ripple sold 14.6 billion “units” of XRP for $1.3 billion.
The argument from Garlinghouse and Larsen is that since the SEC has not alleged their finances are intermingled with those of the company, there’s no need for personal information to be out in the open.
Prominent players in the crypto industry have moved to distance themselves from Ripple. Exchanges like Coinbase, Binance, and Kraken have halted all XRP trading; asset manager Grayscale ditched its dedicated XRP fund; and earlier this month, the wire transfer service MoneyGram abandoned its multi-year partnership with the company.