- Ripple Company was facing charges by the SEC.
- On 22 December 2022, SEC filed a motion to conceal some information on the case.
- This is new considering how harsh the SEC is towards crypto firms.
SEC’s appeal to conceal documents in the Ripple Labs case has stirred criticism from the community. The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sought to seal these documents claiming that they were not of importance to the summary judgment decision of the court.
SEC filed the Motion to Seal Summary Judgment Document on December 22, appealing to conceal some information and documents concerning the Ripple case, including the Hinman Speech documents.
The Hinman Documents
The Hinman speech documents refer to the speech that William Hinman, SEC’s former Corporation Finance Division Director, made in June 2018 at the Yahoo Finance All Markets Summit. He also said that Ethereum Blockchain’s native token, ETH, is not a security.
According to Ripple, the documents are crucial pieces of evidence needed to help them with their case against the SEC, the U.S. regulator.
In its recent motion, the SEC said that its mission overshadows the ‘public’s rights” to acquire documents that are not important to the court’s summary judgment. SEC also appealed that any references to the Hinman Speech Documents be removed from the defendant’s papers.
The crypto community reacted negatively following SEC’s request, with one crypto user saying that Gary Gensler, the SEC chairman, has a questionable agenda: “Anyone else wonders what Gary Gensler and the SEC are hiding?” tweeted XRPcryptowolf.
The Hinman document also petitioned to conceal information related to the SEC’s XRP investors and expert witnesses, who gave declarations and internal SEC documents showing debate and rumination by SEC officials.
In response to @FilanLaw’s tweet about SEC requesting for the Hinman documents to be sealed, @freddyriz tweeted that.
“No surprise the SEC wants to keep the Hinman emails/docs redacted. Given J. Torres’ rulings to date (including her position that the emails are likely only relevant for impeachment), I predict she probably rules to keep them redacted. Sad, but not unreasonable.”
All these followed Ripple Labs filing its final submission on DEC 2 against the U.S. regulator. This means that the legal battle that has gone on for two years might end soon.
On October 21, Ripple confirmed that it accessed the Hinman Speech Documents after six court orders and 18 months. However, the documents remained confidential, as requested by the SEC.
The court had initially denied the SEC’s petition to conceal the Hinman documents, with the U.S. judge stating it was hypocritical for the SEC to do so.
The SEC Vs. Ripple Labs
On December 12, 2020, the SEC filed a complaint against Ripple Labs, the XRP token creator, claiming that the latter and related defendants had gone against Sections 5(a) and 5(c) of the 1993 Securities Act by selling securities in exchange for money and other funds worth more than $1.38 billion.
The two-year case is now at a decisive point since both sides petitioned for motions for summary judgment in mid-September, requesting the court to decide the most critical issue in the case, whether XRP is a security that has to be registered under the Securities Act.
