A New York judge rejected a joint request from the American Commission for Securities and Exchange (SECOND) And Ripple Labs to approve an proposed settlement agreement which would reduce the civil penalty of Ripple to $ 50 million and dissolve the permanent injunction against the company.
This is the proposed abolition of the permanent injunction, and not the civil sanction of $ 50 million – reduced compared to the $ 125 million imposed by the court last year – which seems to be the collision point of the district judge Analisa Torres of the South New York District (Sdny)Who wrote during his statition Thursday that a permanent injunction against additional violations of federal securities on securities was, as the SEC suggested at the time, “justified because of the enormous sums of the undulation of money made to violate the law and the incentives of Ripple to continue to do so”.
“Indeed, if the court should not be concerned about the fact that Ripple violated the law, why do the parties want to eliminate the injunction which says Ripple,” follow the law, “wrote Torres. “When the court imposed the injunction, it did it because it noted a” reasonable probability “that Ripple would continue to violate federal securities. This has not changed, and the parties do not claim that she did it. ”
The demand comes in the middle of radical changes to the dry following the election of American president Donald Trump in January and the subsequent departure of the former President of the SEC, Gary Gensler. By virtue of the new management of the SEC, the regulator adopted a more user -friendly regulatory posture of the crypto, creating a cryptographic working group led by Commissioner Hester Peirce and abandoning a multitude of surveys and disputes against cryptographic companies. However, as Torres underlined in his decision, most of these cases were rejected by the dry “before a court concluded a violation of federal securities laws”.
“Regardless of leadership changes, the SEC has avoided the whip between arguments in current disputes to protect the credibility of the agency,” said Corey Frayer, director of investor protection at the Federation of America. “By granting favors to crypto companies, the leadership of the SEC has chosen to tarnish a reputation of 90 years, the agency is carefully built.”
This is the second request for an indicative decision of the SEC – essentially, an overview of what a lower court will do if a higher court refers the case to the lower court for a final decision – which Torres rejected. In May, she slapped the first attempt of this type, citing both jurisdictional and procedural defects. Earlier this month, the parties again judged, submitting a new exposed request to the court arguing that the “exceptional circumstances” justified the modification of the final judgment of Torres.
Torres was not fully moved by the arguments of the dry and Ripple, writing: “The court respects the freedom of the parties to resolve their disputes amicably. It is also true that the SEC, like any other law application of the law, has the discretion to change courses after a commitment to apply the law. The penalty was necessary to prevent this part from violating the law.
If the parties “really want to end this dispute today,” wrote Torres, they have two other choices: they can either remove their current calls in the case, or they can call.
“None of the two options consists in demanding that this court denounce its obligations under the law,” said Torres.
