According to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Telegram isn’t willing to disclose financial documents and answer questions that would’ve shed more light on the disposition of investor funds. The SEC wants the information before the testimony of three Telegram employees, including CEO Pavel Durov, scheduled for next week. The regulator believes it’s relevant to the case it filed against the operator of the popular encrypted messenger in October.

On Thursday, the commission asked the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to order Telegram to provide the documents, including bank records. These, the SEC hopes, will demonstrate how much Telegram has spent from the funds it collected in two token sales conducted in early 2018. The money was to be used for the development of the Telegram Open Network (TON) project and the integration of the Telegram messenger and other applications with it. In its letter to the court, the SEC notes:

Plaintiff respectfully moves to compel Defendants to answer questions and provide documents regarding the amounts, sources, and use of funds raised from investors in connection with the unregistered sale of securities at issue in this case.

Telegram delayed the launch of the TON blockchain, for which it received support from investors, when the SEC took the company to court claiming that its ICO constituted an unregistered offering of securities. The company insists that the Gram (GRM) token is a currency. In the two private sales, between January and March 2018, Telegram sold the rights to 2.9 billion coins to 171 investors worldwide for $1.7 billion, including $424.5 million to 39 U.S. residents.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: news.bitcoin.com