Experts weigh prospects for TON investors’ lawsuit

Telegram founder Pavel Durov’s notice of the intention to file a lawsuit against entities linked to Telegram Open Network (TON) does not yet mean that the case will go to court. If the process begins, the likelihood of plaintiffs’ claims being fully satisfied is small, say ForkLog experts surveyed.

Managing partner of EXANTE, Aleksei Kirienko, noted that information about a collective suit against TON “circulated about a year ago.” At that time, many investors consulted lawyers and, if there were prospects of recovering funds, they could unite into a coalition for a class-action suit, he said.

“However, in the TON situation, the probability of success appears low, and the cost of litigation could be significantly higher than the losses from the unsuccessful investment,” Kirienko said.

He added that the choice of jurisdiction for the lawsuit seems “quite strange, since it is the American regulator that actually banned the issue of TON, and in the U.S. the chances of a favorable court decision could be higher.”

Earlier, London was seen as the most likely jurisdiction for the proceedings.

A pre-trial claim is usually filed in order to satisfy the mandatory pre-trial dispute resolution requirements of the law, GMT Legal managing partner Andrei Tugarin noted:

“Filing a letter before claim is not even half the work; it’s only 10% of some result.”

He also stressed that the claim “does not at all mean that the facts set out in it are reliable and accurate”:

“The court will have to verify a dozen facts, and the plaintiff must prove all of them with documentary evidence and in proper form. Often the numbers indicated in the claim have nothing to do with those that the court ultimately recovers in its final decision.”

Yuri Brisov, a member of the Commission on Legal Support of the Digital Economy of the Moscow Branch of the Russian Lawyers Association, believes that the company could satisfy certain claims in pre-trial or by settlement.

“However, investors are not rushing to sue Telegram. The practice of blockchain-related disputes is still unsettled. Investors may fear the risk of a contract’s non-fulfillment being deemed force majeure, such a clause existed in the contract, and it’s hard to say with 100% certainty how a court would view it,” he says.

Stasis founder Grigory Klumov noted that “external observers” do not possess concrete information that Telegram’s team conveyed to the Da Vinci Capital fund:

“Therefore, it’s very hard to judge to what extent the fund could have considered itself ‘misled’.”

Earlier, due to a clash with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Pavel Durov announced the closure of TON. In June, Durov said that the TON team had returned $1.2 billion to project investors in accordance with contractual agreements.

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