A US court may oblige the Telegram company to explain how the $1,7 billion that was raised as part of the ICO and intended for the development of the TON blockchain platform and the Gram cryptocurrency is spent. A request for a corresponding petition was received from the US Securities and Markets Commission (SEC) in the Southern District Court of New York.
Earlier, Telegram provided documents on receiving investments in the amount of $1,7 billion, but did not talk about how these funds were spent. The report states that the regulator expects to receive documents before Telegram founder Pavel Durov testifies in court in a few days as part of the proceedings with the SEC. Financial documentation is required by the SEC to conduct the Howey Test, a procedure used to determine whether a financial product is a security.
βDefendantβs failure to fully disclose and answer questions about the spending of $1,7 billion that was raised from investors is deeply troubling,β the SEC said in a letter sent to the district court.
Let us recall that as part of the preliminary sale of Gram tokens in the fall of 2019, Telegram managed to attract $1,7 billion from investors from around the world. The Gram cryptocurrency and its own blockchain platform Telegram Open Network were supposed to become the basis of a large-scale ecosystem. The launch of the platform was scheduled for October 31 last year, but due to the SEC lawsuit and a temporary ban on further token sales, it had to be postponed. The regulator considered that the ICO was a securities transaction not formalized in accordance with current US laws.
Ultimately, Pavel Durov sent out a letter to investors, which stated that the launch of the TON platform was postponed to April 30, 2020, and Telegram stopped working with cryptocurrency until all legal issues were resolved.
Source: 3dnews.ru