The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has dropped its aiding and abetting charges against Ripple’s top executives.
In a letter to Judge Analisa Torres, the SEC notified the court that it is dropping its charges against Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse and co-founder Chris Larsen.
The charges were related to the SEC’s original lawsuit from 2020 that alleged Ripple issued XRP, the native asset of the XRP ledger, as an unregistered security. In July, the courts decided that the firm’s programmable sales of the asset were not securities transactions.
In a new press release from Ripple, the company describes the SEC’s move as a “stunning capitulation” by the US government.
Says Garlinghouse,
“For nearly three years, Chris and I have been the subject of baseless allegations from a rogue regulator with a political agenda… Instead of looking for the criminals stealing customer funds on offshore exchanges that were courting political favor, the SEC went after the good guys – along with our entire company of innovators and entrepreneurs – who are building a regulated business based in the US. We look forward to the day this chapter is closed once and for all, now that the SEC has dropped the curtain on their absurd theatrics against Chris and me.”
Ripple says that due to the regulatory confusion that the SEC has created in its “misguided quest for power,” crypto innovation is being pushed out of the US, and 90% of the company’s business is now outside of the US.
Meanwhile, Larsen says that the SEC’s decision to drop its charges against the executives helped legally vindicate them against the regulator’s political agenda to “suffocate crypto in America.”
“It is a travesty that we were forced to defend ourselves from an ill-advised attack that was flawed from the day it was filed. While justice ultimately prevailed, the government’s actions that led to this point raise questions about the origin and motivation of this lawsuit. It is an abuse by the administrative state that politically connected special interests, with clear and proven conflicts of interest, were able to drag our names through the mud in an attempt to ruin us personally and destroy a company so many have worked so hard, for so long to build.”
XRP rose 7% following the news and is trading at $0.52 at time of writing.
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