American Republican Senator Tom Tuberville призвал the Department of Justice and SEC to study Prometheum’s activities — a broker in the digital-asset space.
The lawmaker was backed by several Republicans in the House — Blaine Luetkemeyer, Barry Loudermilk, Ralph Norman, Byron Donalds, and Mark Alford.
Ember Capital стал первым SEC-registered and FINRA broker-dealer designated as a special-purpose for digital securities.
In the open letter, the senator addressed the heads of the agencies Merrick Garland and Gary Gensler.
In it, Tuberville accused Prometheum CEO Aaron Kaplan of perjury under oath during Congressional hearings and of violating securities laws. The latter relates to potentially misleading investors in filings with the SEC.
According to the document, Kaplan told Congress that the company had independently developed the underlying blockchain-platform service since 2019. In disclosures to the Commission through 2021, the firm acknowledged dependence on Shanghai Wanxiang Blockchain. Tuberville regards the latter as linked to the Chinese Communist Party.
“If Prometheum began developing a platform fully independent of Chinese partners […] in December 2019, as Kaplan testified before Congress, why was this not disclosed in documents to the SEC? Why in these reports through 2020 and even in 2021 did the company say it worked with Wanxiang and its “daughter” Hashkey?” — the letter states.
Earlier, on the pages of WSJ, Tuberville did not rule out that the partnership and broker licensing “could pose threats to data security and the privacy of American investors.”
Kaplan, for his part, said that the SEC has no grounds to investigate because Wanxiang owns only 20% of Prometheum, and the company does not have access to data and technologies of the crypto broker, according to CoinDesk.
The firm has also faced sharp criticism — industry participants rejected the viability of Prometheum’s proposed digital-asset trading model as securities.
In June, SEC Chair Gary Gensler questioned the need for cryptocurrencies.
Earlier, the official again warned that the existing digital-asset markets do not comply with the law.