- Garlinghouse and Larsen were accused of aiding and abetting Ripple in violating securities laws
- This is yet another victory for the crypto company in the long-running lawsuit.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has dropped charges against Ripple's CEO Brad Garlinghouse and Executive Chairman Chris Larsen, world media reported, citing an official state filing. The two were accused of aiding and abetting Ripple in violating federal securities laws in its transactions of its native token XRP.
Another victory for the crypto company
With this decision, the trial scheduled for next year was canceled. This is yet another victory for the crypto company in the long-running lawsuit.
Ripple won another battle in July with the court’s decision that it had not violated federal securities laws by launching XRP on exchanges for retail customers. Only direct sale to institutional investors was deemed a violation.
According to the filing, the SEC will continue pursuing its claims against Ripple. Brad Garlinghouse commented:
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.
The filing further states that Ripple and SEC planned to meet and confer on a future briefing on the right legal remedies against Ripple for its Section 5 violations, which involve selling XRP to institutional investors.
SEC appeal denied, regulator faces headwinds
Earlier this month, the court denied an appeal by the SEC against its loss in the Ripple case. This is only one of many setbacks the regulator has experienced. US judges don’t agree with SEC Chair Gary Gensler that practically all cryptocurrencies are securities.
Ripple has moved offshore
Ripple has stated that the majority of its business is now done outside the US.
A legal tactic
It’s possible that SEC dropped the cases against the execs as a legal tactic. If it hadn’t, it would have had to wait until late spring next year to appeal the Ripple decision, when their trials would have come to an end.
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