SEC disclosed details of Pavel Durov's correspondence with TON investors

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) intends to obtain testimony from the former chief investment officerTelegram consultant and get documents from him related to TON token for $ 1.7 billion, CoinDesk reports.

SEC appealed to the High Court of England and Wales withrequesting evidence from John Hyman, a former UK investment banker at Morgan Stanley and Renaissance Capital.

Information on this is in the documents filed inFriday to the New York Southern District Federal Court. The commission continues to intend to prevent the launch of the TON blockchain project, which involves the release of Gram tokens. The latter, confident in the SEC, have the properties of securities.

According to documents, Hyman was actively involved.into TON fundraising activities and maintained contact with “over a dozen” investors. In January 2018, Pavel Durov called him Telegram's chief investment adviser and the person involved in Gram distribution. It is also known that Hyman negotiated with buyers with a project token, confirmed the details of operations and provided various information to the participants of the token sale.

Gray market

Hyman warns in an emailinvestors, that “for regulatory reasons Telegram will never conduct a direct public offer. The report also says that "the public will be able to buy Gram only after the launch of the network, but not directly from Telegram."

In a letter to Blake Byers from Google Ventures in May 2018, Hyman said a third private round of funding would be held. However, these plans have not been realized.

The documents also say that Hymantracked activity in the Gram aftermarket. The latter arose almost immediately after the first round of token sale, held in February 2018. Despite the fact that TON investors were forbidden to resell their digital assets, the gray market developed with the active participation of small exchanges, brokers and over-the-counter dealers.

Durov's mail

SEC Provides CEO Communications InformationTelegram Pavel Durov with some potential TON investors. For example, in January 2018, Durov planned a meeting in London with Hyman and partner of the investment firm Kleiner Perkins, Mamun Hamid.

Communication Durov with Hamid began in October 2017of the year. It is noteworthy that then Hamid was introduced to the head of Telegram as a man named Jared Leto. And although the role of the popular actor and musician in the project is unclear, a person with that name used the email indicated on the official website of the celebrity - Jaredleto.com.

Pavel Durov asked Hamid if he was interestedblockchain investments. At the same time, Telegram CEO said that he canceled his trip to the United States, because during the Gram presale, the number of applications for the purchase of tokens "too quickly exceeded the subscription limit."

Hamid replied that he and his Kleiner Perkins are actively interested in blockchain.

“Social Capital, where I worked earlier, invested 2% in BTC in 2013. We have been one of the largest investors in Digital Currency Group since 2011. ", - wrote partner Kleiner Perkins.

Durov represented Hyman as the maininvestment advisors and other potential investors, including Jerry Murdoch, founder of Insight Venture Partners, Dave Munichello of Google Ventures, Pete Briger of the Fortress Investment Group, and Esuke Sasaki and Rajiva Misre of Softbank.

Intractable witness

Documents say Hyman didn'tvoluntarily meet with the American regulator. However, Hyman's lawyer Greg Campbell initially stated that he would appear to testify. After some time, Campbell stopped responding to “numerous SEC phone calls and emails.”

In addition to the testimony, the Commission intends to receive Hyman's correspondence with the management and investors of Telegram, documents on his employment in the company and information about his investments in TON.

According to the SEC, Hyman has now leftTelegram and running Gram Vault. The latter positions itself as a custodian of TON coins, which previously negotiated with the largest investors of the project. It is also known that Gram Vault agreed to list tokens with the Poloniex exchange.

Already at Gram Vault, Hyman also helped establish a connection with the cryptocurrency custodian Anchorage. The latter, as expected, was to become a Telegram partner to serve US customers.

Is the secondary market to blame?

As already mentioned, the SEC insists thatTON project tokens possess the properties of securities. However, Telegram is trying to prove that the funds were raised in accordance with Regulation D - an exception that exempts from the need to register the issue of securities.

“In any case, the exception provided for in Regulation D does not apply to Telegram.”- insists the Commission.

The SEC also claims that Telegram allowedinvestors to buy Gram for resale on the secondary and profit. However, the company did not take measures to prevent this activity.

“Telegram marketing materials naturally formed an opinion about Gram buyers that their investments imply participation in a joint venture and promise profit”, - stated in the materials of the Commission.

Recall that in the coming months, Pavel Durov and two more employees of the company will testify in court in the SEC case against Telegram Group Inc and TON Issuer Inc.