Ripple executives, Bradley Garlinghouse and Christian Larsen, rejected the requirements of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission to provide personal financial information as part of an ongoing investigation into a possible XRP sales bond violation.
On March 11, lawyers for the co-founders of Ripple Labs requested a protection order regarding their personal information and asked the court to overturn the subpoenas issued to six of the defendants’ banks.
The banking institutions specifically named were the SVB Financial Group, the First Republic Bank, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Silver Lake Bank, the Silvergate Bank and Citibank.
The lawyers for Garlinghouse and Larsen argued that the SEC had exceeded the appropriate breadth of its investigations when it claimed that the defendants had mixed their personal finances with those of Ripple Labs. Thursday’s filing stated:
“The SEC’s multifaceted attempt to sift through the individual defendant’s personal financial information in a fraud-free litigation, where the defendants have already agreed to produce the relevant information about the disputed transactions, is a totally inappropriate exaggeration.”
The “contested transactions” in question refer to the unrecorded sale of 14.6 billion XRP as of 2013 – a sum of $ 1.38 billion at the time of the claim, now worth $ 6.5 billion.
The legal team at Garlinghouse and Larsen makes clear their customers’ willingness to cooperate with respect to financial records related to XRP sales, including trading records and compensation documentation that they both received from Ripple.
“Specifically, the individual defendants agreed to produce (a) trading records relating to the XRP sales that the SEC is contesting in this case, and (b) financial records relating to the compensation they received from Ripple,” said the filing.
The financial records relating to unrelated business activities and today’s spending accounts, according to the lawyers, are not relevant to the case in question. The process stated:
“As designed, therefore, these orders demand everything from the product of unrelated business activities to how much money they spend at the supermarket each week.”
The subpoenas issued by the SEC require years of transaction data and monthly statements from Garlinghouse and Larsen’s personal bank accounts, including images of all money orders, checks and electronic funds transfers.