The CEO of payments firm Ripple, Brad Garlinghouse, is speaking out on allegations made against him by a crypto whistleblower.
The whistleblower known as Crypto Leaks alleged that attorney Kyle Roche had said that Garlinghouse was an angel investor in Roche Freedman – a law firm Roche focused on suing players in the crypto industry.
Crypto Leaks says Roche proposed to Garlinghouse that he “create a new law firm that would specialize in suing others in crypto, using exactly the same kinds of tactics that were being used against Ripple.”
“Kyle asked that Brad become his angel investor, and curiously Brad agreed — one might have expected he would want to see less of this kind of litigation across the industry…
Before Kyle Roche founded Roche Freedman and made a pact with Ava Labs, he was a relatively lowly associate at the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner. They were representing Ripple, who were defending a lawsuit claiming their XRP token was an illegal security.”
Addressing the claim, Garlinghouse says that he has never had any affiliation with Roche.
“Can’t comment on the validity of the slew of allegations in here, but I can unequivocally say that I have never met or spoken to (much less invested in) Kyle Roche.”
Regarding the allegations that Garlinghouse was an angel investor in Roche Freedman, crypto legal expert Jeremy Hogan says that a law firm accepting investments from non-lawyers constitutes extremely unethical behavior, and therefore the claims are unlikely.
“It would be completely unethical for a law firm to have a non-lawyer investor. So, fake news, unless Mr. Roche doesn’t care about his law license…”
Ava Labs founder and CEO Emin Gun Sirer, who was also named in the Crypto Leaks report, says that the allegations are “conspiracy theory nonsense”.
“How could anyone believe something so ridiculous as the conspiracy theory nonsense on Crypto Leaks? We would never engage in the unlawful, unethical and just plain wrong behavior claimed in these self-serving videos and inflammatory article. Our tech & team speak for themselves.”
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