A New York judge has rejected a joint request from the United States Stock Exchange and Securities Commission. (SECOND) and Ripple Labs so that she approves a proposed liquidation agreement that would reduce the civil fine of Ripple to $ 50 million and dissolve the permanent court order against the company.
It is the proposed elimination of the permanent court order, and not the civil fine of $ 50 million, with a discount of the original $ 125 million imposed by the court last year, that seems to be the point of conflict for the Analisa Torres District Judge of the Southern District of New York (SDNY)Who wrote in his ruling on Thursday that a permanent court order against additional violations of federal values of values was, as the SEC suggested at that time, “guaranteed due to the enormous sums of money that Ripple made by violating Ripple’s law and incentives to continue doing it.”
“In fact, if the court does not worry about violating the law, why do the parties want to eliminate the court order that Ripple tells,” follow the law, “Torres wrote. “When the court imposed the court order, he did it because he found a” reasonable probability “that Ripple continues to violate federal values laws. This has not changed or the parties claim that he has.”
The application is produced in the midst of radical changes in the SEC after the election of the president of the United States, Donald Trump, in January and the subsequent departure of the former president of the SEC, Gary Gensler. According to the new SEC leadership, the regulator has adopted a more friendly regulatory position with cryptography, creating a cryptographic working group headed by Commissioner Hester Peirce and abandoning a large amount of investigations and litigation against cryptographic companies. However, as Torres pointed out in his ruling, Seco dismissed most of those cases “before a court considered a violation of federal laws of values.”
“Regardless of the changes in leadership, the SEC has avoided the whip between the arguments in ongoing litigation to protect the credibility of the agency,” said Corey Frayer, director of Investor Protection of the Federation of Consumers of America. “By granting favors to cryptographic companies, the leadership of the SEC has chosen to tarnish a 90 -year reputation that the agency built carefully.”
This is the second SEC request for an indicative decision, essentially, a preview of what a lower court will do if a superior court sends the case of return to the lower court for a final decision, which Torres has rejected. In May, he slapped the first attempt of this type, citing jurisdictional and procedure failures. Earlier this month, the parties tried again, presenting a new expanded request before the court arguing that “exceptional circumstances” guaranteed the modification of the final sentence of Torres.
Torres was completely flimmed by the arguments of the SEC and Ripple, writing: “The court respects the freedom of the parties to resolve their disputes their disputes. It is also true that the SEC, like any other agency of application of the law, has the discretion of changing a course after an application action is initiated. The penalty was necessary to prevent that part from violating the law again.
If the parties “really want to finish this litigation today,” Torres wrote, they have two other options: they can withdraw their ongoing appeals in the case, or can give an appeal.
“None of the options implies demanding that this court acquitting Ripple of its obligations under the law,” Torres said.
