Ripple argues SEC stalls case amid refusal to hand over Bitcoin, Ether and XRP documents

In the latest development in the legal battle between the United States Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) and Ripple Labs, the blockchain firm has filed a motion to compel the government agency to turn over internal documents related to cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum and XRP.

SEC refuses to produce documents for the third time

Ripple’s motion to compel the securities regulator to hand over documents has been a tug of war, as the SEC has been refusing to produce the records despite Judge Sarah Netburn’s reiteration last month.

In the ongoing SEC v. Ripple case, the cross-border remittance firm had landed a victory in early April when it won in a discovery hearing that would force the financial watchdog to hand over its internal documents on Bitcoin, Ether and XRP.

While Ripple seeks to find documents where XRP is mentioned by the securities regulator as a “virtual currency” similar to Bitcoin and Ethereum, the SEC has once again resisted. The official filing reads:

Despite that repeated instruction, the SEC persists in refusing to search an obvious repository for responsive evidence on external communications: the SEC’s FinHub electronic mailbox.

Ripple Labs stated that for the third time, the court should require the agency to produce the communications with third parties and should grant “any additional relief it deems appropriate in light of SEC’s repeated noncompliance.”

The defendant’s motion asks the court to order the regulator once again to search and produce all documents related to Bitcoin, Ether and XRP from the SEC’s FinHub electronic mailbox, as well as the agency’s trading policies related to digital assets and virtual currencies before the deadline of June 18, 2021. 

Ripple further argued that it seems as though the SEC is looking to stall the case in light of the financial watchdog’s most recent request to extend the fact and expert discovery deadlines by 60 days. The blockchain firm stated:

The SEC has repeatedly delayed its production while telling Judge Torres that the ordered discovery was “irrelevant and needless,” ECF No. 205 at 14, and asking the Court to extend the discovery deadlines based, inter alia, on the fact that Defendants “have raised a number of concerns regarding the SEC’s review and production of internal documents and communications responsive to Judge Netburn’s April 6, 2021 order.