SEC Is On ‘Unfounded Fishing Expedition’ :Telegram Lawyers

The battle between SEC and Telegram is still on, and lawyers representing the encrypted messaging app have recently requested a United States court to throw out the regulator demands for its bank accounts. As the lawyers said in a letter, SEC is on “unfounded fishing expedition” which is leading to nowhere.

The letter was sent to the Judge P. Kevin Castel at the Daniel Patricl Moynihan United States Courthouse in New York on January 3 by Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP.

For those of you who haven’t been following our altcoin news and rumors, the SEC previously demanded Telegram to hand over details of how it spent the proceeds of its initial coin offering (ICO) which raised $1.7 billion.

In a letter to Judge Castel dated January 2nd resulted in Castel giving Telegram less than one single business day to respond. Right now, SEC is on a mission to resolve things. However, the letter read:

“On behalf of Defendants, we write in opposition to the letter motion filed by (the SEC), seeking to compel the production of voluminous and highly sensitive bank records that have little to no bearing on the claims and defenses in this action and would impose undue burdens on Defendants.”

The lawyers at Telegram continued, writing:

“Plaintiff’s letter misconstrues the legal issues in the case and omits critical facts. Defendants respectfully submit that Plaintiffs motion to compel constitutes an unfounded fishing expedition and should be denied.”

Castel will decide whether or not to approve the SEC’s letter to compel Telegram to part with this information. The latest debacle by the messaging app also continues a lengthy legal process which has so far failed to result in definitive action.

The SEC is on a way to resolve the issue. So far, they have investigated various ICOs for securities violations. One of them was the Canadian messaging app Kik and its $100 million token sale which also sparked a legal battle. As we reported in the crypto news back then, the company was almost forced to shut down in October 2019 as a result of that.

Meanwhile, the SEC Chairman Jay Clayton took to the public last month and said that the body’s approach in the crypto sphere is “measured.”