While the dust is still settling after Ripple’s several major victories in the court case against the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the blockchain company’s chief legal officer, Stuart Alderoty, criticized the regulator and compared its chairman to a movie villain.
As it happens, Alderoty pointed out all the ways in which the SEC was doing a poor job, comparing Gary Gensler to Colonel Nathan R. Jessup from a 1989 stage play and 1992 hit movie A Few Good Men, who became a symbol of institutional indoctrination, in an X post on November 16.
Furthermore, the legal expert scorned the SEC for losing in court, receiving flak from judges over “shady behavior” in multiple cases, and getting reprimanded by the government’s internal auditor over handling contentious cryptocurrency accounting bulletins.
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On top of that, Alderoty noted that the regulator was “becoming irrelevant on the international stage” and observed its failure to share information “about meetings with a felon,” meaning the former CEO of the now-defunct crypto exchange FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried.
Gensler’s meetings with SBF
Indeed, the SEC has been facing scrutiny over a Zoom call that Gensler held with Bankman-Fried in March 2022, leading to criticism of alleged conflicts of interest and close ties with the person later found guilty on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy.
What’s more, official documents have suggested there was no record that the SEC chief ever requested permission from his agency’s Office of the Ethics Counsel to meet with Bankman-Fried, which was against the regulator’s own protocol and raised multiple red flags.
As Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse pointed out in October after his company’s victory, “the SEC repeatedly kept its eye off the ball while secretly meeting with the likes of SBF – failing again and again to protect US consumers and businesses,” wondering how many millions of taxpayer money the agency wasted on the case.
