Advocacy group files FOIA request with SEC seeking documents related to possible crypto conflict of interest
Former SEC officials William Hinman, Marc Berger, and Jay Clayton have been asked to write letters to their present employers on behalf of EMPOWR.
For the purpose of obtaining communications between former SEC officials and their former and future employers, the watchdog group Empower Oversight Whistleblowers & Research (EMPOWR) has filed suit against the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to compel the agency to comply with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
In their lawsuit, EMPOWR said that the ex-SEC officers were biased against Bitcoin because of their prior employment.
Whether or not particular cryptocurrencies constitute securities, and are therefore subject to SEC regulation, will be revealed by the requested data. Before joining the SEC in 2017, Hinman was a partner at the law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLC. After leaving the SEC in October 2020, he came back to work for the company.
When Berger left the SEC in 2021, he joined Simpson Thacher as a partner, and Clayton went to work for the cryptocurrency hedge firm One River Asset Management.
Enterprise Ethereum Alliance was an organization that Simpson Thacher was a part of because they wanted to “drive the use of Enterprise Ethereum.” According to EMPOWR’s findings, Hinman made millions of dollars from the legal business while he was there.
Since while at the SEC, Hinman gave a seminar titled “Digital Asset Transactions: When Howey Met Gary (Plastic),” EMPOWR worried that his continued links to his former law firm may create a conflict of interest. He declared Ether to be a commodity in his speech, and as a result, “Ether’s value rose significantly.” In the SEC’s action claiming that sales of Ripple’s XRP currency violated U.S. securities laws, the agency, and Ripple Labs engaged in a legal tug-of-war over documents related to that speech.
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