James Filan, the defendant’s attorney, has, as is his custom, made public the most recent court filing in the SEC-Ripple lawsuit, which shows that the SEC has filed its Response in Partial Opposition to the Ripple Defendant’s Motion to Seal specific records submitted in affiliation with the parties’ Cross-Motions for Summary Judgment.
All of Ripple’s audited financial statements are going to be withheld from public view by the SEC in their entirety. The SEC says it is not opposed to Ripple’s most recent financial statements from 2020 being kept confidential, but they are opposed to Ripple’s prior financial statements being kept confidential.
Additionally, the SEC intends to keep Ripple’s financial statements in their entirety under wraps. According to the court filing, while the agency does not feel that the records should be sealed in their entirety, it does believe that a partial sealing (including the suppression of bank account numbers) should be confined to the standards set out by the government.
Lastly, the SEC argues that it is relying on the court’s prior order to seal specific financial information from the petitions to exclude expert evidence notwithstanding the court’s warning that its order today does not hold the same categories of information should be sealed or redacted for summary judgment briefing because the presumption of public access is at its strongest when the data is important to a court’s determination on a motion.
As of right now, there is much conjecture about the case’s potential conclusion, however some in the industry have suggested that the verdict might be in favor of Ripple. U.S. attorney Jeremy Hogan, though, claims that Ripple and the SEC are both equally likely to prevail in court.
