In response to a federal judge’s decision requiring the regulator to pay around $1.8 million in attorney and receivership expenses, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has decided to liquidate one of its eleven regional offices.
The SEC announced in a notification dated June 4 that it would close its Salt Lake Regional Office in 2024. The office is one of only eleven regional offices nationwide. The commission intended to move operations to Denver and stated that “significant attrition” at the office was the reason for the closure.
About a week had passed since Judge Robert Shelby rejected the SEC’s civil suit against Digital Licensing, the company that operates under the name DEBT Box. Additionally, he approved an order mandating that the SEC pay $750,000 in receiver fees and costs and approximately $1 million in attorney fees and costs.
In July 2023, the SEC filed a complaint against DEBT Box, claiming that the company ran an illicit $50 million cryptocurrency scheme. Judge Shelby, however, determined in March that the SEC had acted in bad faith in relation to a temporary restraining order that had frozen DEBT Box’s assets. The SEC was subject to fines by the judge, who also mandated that the regulator pay all legal fees and expenses associated with the improperly entered ex parte remedy.
Over the course of the litigation, two Salt Lake Regional Office-based SEC attorneys are said to have resigned. It’s unclear if their leaving had anything to do with the “significant attrition” that the commission mentioned.
Miguel Francis-Santiago, chief marketing officer of DEBT Box, told Cointelegraph, “[T]he SEC has decided to shut down [the Salt Lake City] office in direct response to the ‘gross misuse of power’ based on the dismissal of the D.E.B.T. Box case.
The commission is now pursuing enforcement measures against a number of cryptocurrency companies, such as Ripple, Coinbase, Binance, and Kraken. Attorneys for Do Kwon, a co-founder of Terraform Labs, and the company announced in May that they had achieved an in-principle settlement in their SEC lawsuit.
