NY Court Still Has Questions about the SEC Against Telegram Case. Pavel Durov Will Give Testimony

by Margot Bafta

Judge Peter Kevin Castel from the Southern District of New York summoned the Telegram founder for questioning, in company with other representatives Ilya Perekopsky and Shyamal Parekh.

Meeting with Durov was scheduled on January 7 or 8, 2020, although the place of hearing wasn't specified as the details will be discussed with the participants. Telegram representatives will be questioned in the ongoing proceedings of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) against two offshore companies: Telegram Group Inc and its subsidiary TON Issuer Inc.

In the mid-October, SEC filed a lawsuit requiring to ban Gram cryptocurrency circulation as the TON creators violated several laws when registering the project.

In a month, Telegram also appealed to the court demanding to reject the SEC's lawsuit, which led to the TON launch holdback along with the issue of the cryptocurrency Gram. Durov's team declared that SEC acts in a voluntaristic order towards the brand-new legal industry without any strict instructions and does not come openly with the position.

As for the date, the litigation was rescheduled for February 18-19, 2020, and the TON start with Gram issue is temporarily halted and postponed until April 30, 2020.

From the SEC lawsuit, it got about that the TON smart contracts fixed the possibility to resell Grams not earlier than after 3, 6, 9 and 12 months - 25% every 3 months. By this safety measure, the Telegram protects its assets. Telegram has already spent $218 million for the blockchain platform buildup, and this sum was taken from the $1.7 billion of invested funds. Besides, some part of the raised assets will be owed by the project inventors.