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The Courts

US Court Orders Terraform Labs' Chief To Comply With SEC Subpoenas (ft.com) 29

A US court has ordered the chief executive of collapsed stablecoin operator Terraform Labs to comply with subpoenas from the regulator seeking documents and materials related to the sale of potential unregistered securities. From a report: The US court of appeals in New York on Wednesday upheld the claim from the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is seeking information on Mirror Protocol, a trading network built on the Terra ecosystem that offered customers tokens that closely mirrored the price of some of the US's largest listed companies such as Apple and Amazon.

The regulator's victory marks a further blow to Terraform Labs' head Do Kwon, who is facing several legal cases in the wake of the sudden $40bn collapse of terraUSD, a stablecoin, and its accompanying token luna, which left investors out of pocket. The 30-year-old South Korean was the chief developer of terraUSD, whose collapse last month sent shockwaves through the crypto industry. Mirror Protocol was also developed by Kwon's Terraform Labs with the hope of bridging traditional finance with crypto.

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US Court Orders Terraform Labs' Chief To Comply With SEC Subpoenas

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  • by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Friday June 10, 2022 @11:48AM (#62609786)

    The rich seem to perform some serious crimes, then when the justice, congressional and regularity agencies go to them and say you are under investigation you must do this. They just go "No", and the fact they said No, puts it back to months or years of additional legal limbo.

    Where the more vulnerable amount us would just say No to the authorities they will pull them away in chains by force for arresting arrest.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

      If you steal a car you go directly into the system, and if you're not in some city where crime is completely out of control you get locked up right away too. But if your wages are stolen there are conferences and hearings, and then the state probably declines to prosecute, and then you have to retain a lawyer and seek civil redress and meanwhile they don't get in any trouble even though they are committing grand theft, and oh yeah by the way wage theft exceeds all other theft [epi.org].

      In short, the governance is by

      • by Anonymous Coward

        Exactly the point above - car theft is usually pretty simple - you took something physically you don't own, were probably caught doing or caught in possession of it.

        Wage theft - is usually very complicated, you CLAIM some contractual term was violated, someone else says otherwise. Even when it is simple like - you say $employer told you that you had to misstate the hours on your time sheet or they'd fire you, they say "didn't happen" and its he said she said.

        Its not a real disparity at all. The situations a

        • Its not a real disparity at all. The situations are not comparable.

          It is a real disparity because they spend far more resources on the kind of crime that is doing the least harm, and the same state allocating the resources is also making the laws that make it easier to punish one kind of crime than another. They can clarify the wage laws further to make it more straightforward, but choose not to.

          • by PPH ( 736903 )

            the kind of crime that is doing the least harm

            What kind of crime is that? Stealing cars is usually related to subsequent property and/or violent crimes. Such as bank robbery, store holdups, drug dealing, organized crime hits, etc. You don't take your own car to commit such crimes.

            • by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Friday June 10, 2022 @01:01PM (#62609986) Homepage Journal

              the kind of crime that is doing the least harm

              What kind of crime is that?

              Any kind of crime but wage theft, which (again) exceeds all other crime combined, and also most negatively affects the economy — because if the people at the bottom of the chain don't get paid, they can't afford to buy stuff. They wind up homeless, and on the street, where they cost everyone money. Then they die early, and both do not contribute, and also cost more money. By deliberately choosing to make other kinds of theft a greater priority than wage theft, governments are willfully keeping down the plebes on behalf of our would-be corporate masters, who are rapidly fulfilling their promise by leading us rapidly towards fascism.

              The crimes we focus on are the priority for the rich because nobody's stealing their wages, but they are stealing our wages, and then spending them on stuff they're afraid we'll steal.

              • by DarkOx ( 621550 )

                Nonsense - we place a huge priority on the civil law.

                Jury trial in civil cases over $20 - that is a massive societal investment in making the courts available to EVERYONE even people with claims the ruling class would view as insignificantly small.

                Police won't even generally begin to investigate those property climes unless you practically hand them the evidence, most of them don't even get to the prosecutors office. So no - stealing car does not get you 'into the system' getting caught does but we hardly a

                • We have an entire DOL that is mostly there to look out for the little guy you claim is so disproportionately under served and not prioritized; as if half the damn federal bureaucracy did not exist....

                  The DOL does literally nothing in these cases, it's left up to the states. And even in California where the laws are supposedly strong, many of these cases are not prosecuted at all and yet it still takes a year to get on the calendar because of how poorly we fund the division of labor enforcement.

                  Literally nothing will make leftards like you happy, because you are utterly blind to reality.

                  You have no idea what the fuck you're talking about, so it would make me happy if you would fuck off immediately.

                  • by DarkOx ( 621550 )

                    Auto theft is around 246.0 per 100,000; probably a higher rate than people experiencing any real wage theft (assuming you exclude illegal aliens who don't have right to be working in the first place).

                    The FBI isn't exactly trying to find a missing vehicle either. Exactly nobody above the county sheriffs office gives a damn.

                    As usually you are the fucking dope here that has no idea what they are yapping about, but you sure as hell have a prescription ready to turn this nation into shithole.

              • In particular, if they're not being paid then they can't afford a lawyer to take the company to court, not even small claims court.

                Another snag is that a lot of wage theft often occurs just before a company goes bankrupt, at which point stand in the back of the line while someone else gets the tiny proceeds that come from selling off the furniture.

          • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

            by quantaman ( 517394 )

            Its not a real disparity at all. The situations are not comparable.

            It is a real disparity because they spend far more resources on the kind of crime that is doing the least harm, and the same state allocating the resources is also making the laws that make it easier to punish one kind of crime than another. They can clarify the wage laws further to make it more straightforward, but choose not to.

            Years ago an employer accidentally paid me some money they weren't supposed to ($X) and as a result I didn't properly claim some other money I was supposed to get ($Y).

            Few months after leaving their employ they say "Oops, you weren't supposed to get $X pay it back". I reply "I have no problem with that though I'd like to get $Y (which is a smaller amount)". They replied "You're too late to get $Y, but if you don't pay back $X we're sending a collection agency after you".

            I'm sure I could have fought and won,

        • by Holi ( 250190 )
          The fact that wage theft is the issue that it is is exactly because of that very disparity of power that you claim does not exist. I am sorry but you are not correct in this case.. It's the companies deep pockets that allow them to use all sorts of delay tactics due the the fact that the vast majority of the time it is civil law and not criminal law that gets applied to them. As such there is no risk of imprisonment and the rules are much looser. That lack of criminal enforcement is the disparity in action
        • In general the law considers crimes where there is a high risk of a physical confrontation should the intended victim happen upon the thief in the act to be graver then "white collar crime," where there is no such risk. This sort of theft is especially dangerous in the U.S because of the high rate of gun-ownership.
    • Part of the problem is who to arrest. If it's you, then it's easy. If it's a corporation, then what you're trying to do is investigate, figure out who in the corporation, or who of their customers commited the crime, and whether there actually was a crime. Which is why a lot of times when the execs get jail time it will be because of contempt of court (refusing to obey subpoenas, etc).

      Also, if you're trying to steal billions of dollars, you set up a shell company. Then you keep your money safe while the b

  • by SlithyMagister ( 822218 ) on Friday June 10, 2022 @12:59PM (#62609978)
    Why a court order is needed to enforce a subpoena, which is itself a court order?
    Will a court order by required to enforce the court order issued to enforce the court order ... to enforce the court order?
    • by EvilSS ( 557649 ) on Friday June 10, 2022 @01:16PM (#62610014)

      The US court of appeals in New York on Wednesday upheld the claim from the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is seeking information on Mirror Protocol, a trading network built on the Terra ecosystem that offered customers tokens that closely mirrored the price of some of the US's largest listed companies such as Apple and Amazon.

      The SEC sent Terraform a subpoena. Terraform doesn't want to comply with the subpoena so they went to court to get the subpoena quashed. The court ruled against them and told them they need to comply with it.

    • by Virtucon ( 127420 ) on Friday June 10, 2022 @01:50PM (#62610096)

      The SEC has the right to subpoena and their own court system. A recent ruling by the appellate court ruled that their courts were unconstitutional. [thehill.com]

      Kwon says the SEC can't touch him since he lives in Singapore. AFAIK, Singapore and the US have extradition treaties, so he's screwed.

      The court order came from a US District court judge, not an SEC judge.

  • In 1902 St. Mark's Companile, a Medieval Italian civic tower that had stood for 800 years suddenly collapsed.

    Isolated incident?

    In 1989 the Pavia Civic Tower, a Medieval Italian civic tower that had stood for 900 years suddenly collapsed. It was then that people realized that the St. Mark's Companile collapse was not just a one-off isolated event, but a hazard that all of these old towers all faced. St. Mark's was just the first such tower to collapse. They closed the Tower of Pisa months later and got serio

    • And yet strangely, a number of tall buildings still survive.

      So by an analogy just as valid or not as yours, some cryptocurrency/blockchain infrastructure may be structurally just fine or be fixed up adequately, and may survive for a long time.
    • Our village tower, which was built in 1262, collapsed in 2016. There are large numbers of skew medieval towers all over Europe. Pisa is hardly the best specimen. Just go to Venice and have a look around - skew towers galore.
  • They have no jurisdiction over a South Korean national living in Singapore. Nobody cares what they huff and puff.

And it should be the law: If you use the word `paradigm' without knowing what the dictionary says it means, you go to jail. No exceptions. -- David Jones

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