Ripple Labs is willing to do anything to escape the legal hammer that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has thrown at its XRP token. In order not to be alone in the turmoil, the company is invoking the Binance platform, which already has quite a few problems on its side.
Binance: soon the savior of Ripple?
Since the end of December 2020, Ripple Labs has found itself tied hand and foot in front of the US justice system, following accusations of having illegally issued XRPs, considered as securities by the SEC. Nearly 8 months later, Ripple still hasn’t untangled itself from this case, which seems destined to drag on and cast a great deal of uncertainty over the future of the XRP token.
According to a new court document filed by the defendants’ attorneys in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Ripple is seeking help from Binance Holdings, parent company of the eponymous crypto exchange.
Specifically, the request concerns the transactions of Brad Garlinghouse, current CEO of Ripple, who is accused – along with Christian Larsen, the executive chairman – of having made a total of $600 million in illegal personal sales of XRP, as not registered with the SEC.
“Mr. Garlinghouse is making an offshore request for evidence based on his good faith belief that [Binance] possesses unique documents and information regarding this matter, and specifically regarding the process by which the XRP transactions allegedly made by Mr. Garlinghouse on foreign digital asset trading platforms were conducted.”
Ripple’s request
The invocation of “made abroad” sales to escape US justice
The strategy here is to consider that the 357 million XRP tokens sold by Brad Garlinghouse through Binance were not sold illegally, because XRP would not be subject to U.S. domestic sales and securities rules if the sales were made on foreign platforms, according to defense lawyers.
“(Mr. Garlinghouse’s) XRP sales were made overwhelmingly on digital asset exchange platforms outside the United States…the evidence Mr. Garlinghouse seeks would be relevant to show that the issuances and sales [of XRP] that the SEC is challenging did not take place in this country and are not subject to the statute that the SEC has relied on in this case.”
It must be said that the SEC had on its side asked for and received much the same thing previously, calling on the help of foreign jurisdictions to help prove Ripple’s guilt.
The fight is not about to be over, as this veritable judicial trench warfare will continue at least until October 15, 2021, the deadline for discovery of exhibits and evidence, before the trial that will come next. Meanwhile, the former founder of the XRP project – Jed McCaleb, who left in 2014 to found Stellar (XLM) – continues to unload his XRP tokens at full speed.
