Tether Requests Roche Freedman Be Terminated As Counsel

Tether requests Roche Freedman, the law firm, be terminated as counsel from the Bitfinex and Tether class-action lawsuit. This comes after a demand by Kyle Roche to be removed as counsel in the case.

Tether and Bitfinex’s legal team asked for Roche’s legal team to be completely removed from the case and certified that they had returned or destroyed any defendant-issued papers and had not shared them with any third party, including Ava Labs, in a court order request submitted by Elliot Greenfield of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP on Wednesday.

The move comes shortly after Roche filed a petition to withdraw from the Tether class-action lawsuit, amid the ongoing fallout from a recent CryptoLeaks exposé alleging the US lawyer had a hidden contract to “damage” Ava Labs competitors in return for AVAX tokens and Ava Labs ownership.

Greenfield stated that Roche’s remarks on the CryptoLeaks website generated a “severe worry” that Kyle Roche “may be abusing the discovery process” and “misusing material” learned via litigation:

“He states that he is Ava Lab’s ‘crypto expert’ because he ‘sue[s] half the companies in the space’ and ’know[s] where this market is going’ because he has ‘seen the insides of every single crypto company.”

Greenfield stated that the issues are very pertinent to the case, pointing out that Roche Freedman LLP “has issued a series of document requests seeking material that has no obvious relation to the claims and defenses in this complaint.”

The lawyer has also emphasized the importance of keeping the documents secret “because they contain not only confidential, competitively sensitive information about Defendants’ businesses, but also information that, if disclosed, would jeopardize the privacy and security of Defendants and their customers.”

While Kyle Roche has filed motions to withdraw from the lawsuit and others, Greenfield stated that Roche’s removal “does little if anything to address the significant problems about the possible misuse of discovery:”

“Even if he is no longer counsel of record, he would still have access to discovery materials, would retain the ability to direct the conduct of other lawyers at his firm, and would profit from any potential recovery in this lawsuit.”

Greenfield went on to say that the “removal would not harm Plaintiffs,” because they will be represented by “two other substantial and experienced companies,” namely Selendy Gay Elsberg PLLC and Schneider Wallace Cottrell Konecky LLP.

Tether and Bitfinex were accused of manipulating the cryptocurrency market by releasing unbacked USDT “in an effort to signal to the market that there was massive, organic demand for crypto goods,” according to a class-action complaint filed in 2019.

Roche has also withdrawn from the Binance, Solana, Tron, BitMEX, Nexo, and Dfinity litigation in recent days. The latest comes as Tether requests Roche Freedman, the law firm, be terminated as counsel.

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