The SEC has moved to dismiss the lawsuit against Ripple’s Brad Garlinghouse and Chris Larsen

Attorneys representing the United States Securities and Exchange Commission have announced that they will dismiss all claims against Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse and executive chairman Chris Larson.

In an Oct. 19 filing in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, the SEC informed the court that the parties involved in the lawsuit against Ripple have “expressed dismissal with prejudice.” Experiment. The filing did not indicate whether the SEC is dropping its civil suit against Ripple itself, originally filed in 2020.

“The SEC and Ripple intend to meet and discuss on a short schedule the pending issue of the case – what remedies are appropriate for Ripple's institutional sale of XRP in Section 5 – and respectfully request by November 9, 2023 to submit such a schedule to the court or, if the parties cannot agree, to request the court's shorter schedule in dispute,” the filing said.

In response to the lawsuit, Ripple's chief legal officer Stuart Aldeorti called the move “a capitulation by the SEC” rather than a deal. The crypto company released a statement referring to the SEC's decision as an “extraordinary capital”.

“Me and Chris […] “Targeted by the SEC in a ruthless attempt to personally undermine us, the company we've worked so hard to build for over a decade,” Garlinghouse said in an Oct. 19 X (formerly Twitter) post.

Today was a better day. Ripple: 3 seconds: 0

More importantly, Chris and I (absent fraud or misrepresentations) have been targeted by the SEC to personally damage us and the company many people have worked so hard to build more than one… https://t.co/YsQxewFnj9

— Brad Garlinghouse (@bgarlinghouse) October 19, 2023

The SEC's action against Ripple began in December 2020, when the commission filed charges against Garlinghouse, Larson and company regarding the sale of its XRP tokens, which the commission said were securities. In July, a federal judge ruled that XRP was not safe to sell to retail investors.

RELATED: Judge Denies SEC's Request to Appeal Ripple's Decision

While it's unclear why the SEC chose to drop the lawsuit, which was scheduled to begin in April 2024, Catherine Kirkpatrick, Cboe Digital's chief legal officer, speculated that dropping the lawsuit against Garlinghouse and Larson could signal the SEC's plans. To appeal the court's decision on XRP as a security – something that she said should have waited until the end of the trial.

The SEC has other pending cases against high-profile figures in the crypto space, including former Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky and former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried. Mashinsky's criminal trial is scheduled to begin in September 2024, while Bankman-Fried's trial is expected to continue on October 26. The commission filed civil charges against crypto exchanges Binance and Coinbase.

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