US court excludes Roche Freedman from suit against Tether and Bitfinex

The law firm Roche Freedman has been removed from representing the plaintiffs in the class action against the cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex and the issuer of the stablecoin Tether, accused of market manipulation. Bloomberg.

A New York court concluded that the firm’s further participation in the case could jeopardize the litigation. Earlier, Tether and Bitfinex had requested Roche’s full exclusion from the proceedings.

The decision was made independently of motion to withdraw from the case filed in September by Roche Freedman’s co-founding partner Kyle Roche. He has also declined to participate in the class actions against the Tron Foundation and HDR Global Trading (the BitMEX brand), Nexo Capital, BAM Trading (Binance.US), Dfinity, Solana Labs and several universities.

In August, the Crypto Leaks portal published a series of exposé videos, in which it accused Roche of using class-action lawsuits to gather confidential information about various cryptocurrency companies. Roche denied the allegations.

The plaintiffs’ lead counsel will remain the firms Selendy Gay Elsberg and Schneider Wallace.

Roche Freedman representatives did not comment.

In 2019, a lawsuit against Bitfinex and the affiliated Tether sought damages totaling $1.4 trillion.

In the same year, another class-action against the companies was filed in the Western District of Washington.

In February 2021, Bitfinex and Tether reached an agreement with the New York Attorney General over a matter concerning financial operations related to the loss of $850 million. As part of the settlement, the companies paid $18.5 million to the state of New York.

Later they paid civil penalties to the CFTC totaling $42.5 million.

Read ForkLog’s Bitcoin news in our Telegram — cryptocurrency news, prices and analysis.