According to U.Today, Stuart Alderoty, the chief legal officer at Ripple, has responded to the recent filing by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), stating that the agency is 'raging.' Alderoty contends that there are no victims to compensate and his company is currently 'thriving.' He also claims that the SEC has now dropped its demand for $2 billion in fines and penalties.
Last week, Ripple referred to the Terraform case in a notice of supplemental authority to its opposition to the SEC's motion for remedies and entry of final judgment. Terraform Labs agreed to pay $4.47 billion to settle the SEC lawsuit. The SEC initially sought a $5.3 billion fine against the company, co-founded by well-known cryptocurrency entrepreneur Do Kwon.
Unlike Terraform Labs, Ripple has not been accused of fraud, leading the company to argue that the SEC's demands are unreasonable and unprecedented. The San Francisco-based company previously argued that its civil penalty should be capped at just $10 million, a fraction of the sum originally requested by the SEC. However, the SEC maintains that such a low penalty 'would not satisfy the purposes of the civil penalty statutes.'
The SEC argues that the comparison with Terraform Labs is not valid as the corporate defendant in that case is in bankruptcy. Furthermore, Terraform has agreed to destroy the keys to all of its crypto asset securities, and two of its board members who were in charge at the time of the violations will be removed. 'The SEC took all these factors into consideration when agreeing to a settlement, and repeatedly cited them as the facts relevant for the court to approve the settlement under applicable law,' the agency stated in its most recent filing.