The CEO of Ava Labs, Emin Gün Sirer, called CryptoLeaks’ shocking claims that his company used lawsuits to “hurt” competitors and trick the government “conspiracy theory gibberish.”
Sirer made the remarks in a tweet to his 280,500 followers on August 28. He was responding to an article published by CryptoLeaks on August 26 that claimed the company had formed a “secret pact” with the U.S. law firm Roche Freedman to use the American legal system “gangster-style” to “attack and harm crypto organisations.”
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On Friday, CryptoLeaks released a series of videos from an unknown source that were said to show U.S. Attorney Kyle Roche of Roche Freedman LLP talking about his partnership and friendship with Emin Gün Sirer and Kevin Sekniqi, who are the CEO and COO of Ava Labs, respectively.
According to CryptoLeaks, Roche Freedman and Kyle Roche, according to CryptoLeaks, have an agreement to provide Ava Labs with legal services in exchange for AVAX tokens and Ava Labs equity, and would also use “litigation as a tool” to disrupt competitors and misdirect regulators such as the Security Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
The magazine also claims that Roche’s films reveal he had a close connection with Sirer, which began in academia, and that they moved into a co-working space together in August 2019, around the time that the agreement for him to perform legal services in exchange for token supply was established.
“Gün [Sirer]… we reached an agreement in which I committed to give legal services in exchange for a portion of the token supply,”
In a separate video, Roche is heard stating that they “used [litigation services] as a strategic tool to help Ava Labs.”
“I litigate fifty percent of the firms in this industry. I know where this sector is headed, and I feel I am among the top ten [crypto specialists] in the world.” According to the video, “I’ve been inside each and every crypto firm.”
This is bizarre. I am not certain if this is genuine, but presuming the videos are not elaborate hoaxes…
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Naturally, #binance was a target. We are not even an opponent.
https://t.co/R5wBtriEBY
August 28, 2022 — CZ Binance (@czbinance)
Roche stated in a video that he “ensures the SEC and CFTC have other [Avalanche rivals] to go after” and that “litigation may be a tool for competitiveness.”
Emin Gün Sirer, the CEO of Ava Labs, strongly denied the claims in the article, calling them “conspiracy theory drivel” and saying that the company would “never do anything illegal, immoral, or just plain wrong.”
The firm employs at least 24 attorneys and has offices in New York City, Boston, and Miami. In July 2017, Roche co-authored “Why Bitcoin is Booming” for the Wall Street Journal. Roche attended North Western University School of Law.
Roche Freedman LLP filed a high-profile lawsuit against Solana Labs, Solana Foundation, and Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko on July 1, 2022. The lawsuit claimed that Solana broke U.S. Federal Securities laws by selling unregistered securities to U.S. investors.
Two weeks before, on June 15, Roche Freedman LLP also filed a complaint against Binance, saying that the cryptocurrency exchange sold UST to investors in a way that was against the law.
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reached out to Ava Labs for comment, but did not receive a prompt response.