The CEO’s remarks follow claims made in a blog post by CryptoLeaks that Ava Labs had a “secret contract” with a U.S. legal firm to sue rivals in return for AVAX tokens and ownership.
Emin Gün Sirer, CEO of Ava Labs, has rejected as “conspiracy theory gibberish” shocking charges made by CryptoLeaks that his business used lawsuits to “hurt” rivals and deceive authorities.
Sirer made the remarks in a post on Twitter on August 28 to his 280,500 followers.
He was responding to a CryptoLeaks article from the previous day, which claimed the company had made a “secret pact” with Roche Freedman to use the American legal system “gangster style” to “attack and harm crypto organizations.”
The U.S. Attorney Kyle Roche of Roche Freedman LLP is allegedly seen in a series of candid videos from an unidentified source discussing his collaboration and connections with Emin Gün Sirer and Kevin Sekniqi, the CEO and COO of Ava Labs, respectively.
The videos were published by CryptoLeaks on Friday.
According to CryptoLeaks, Roche Freedman and Kyle Roche have an agreement to provide Ava Labs with legal services in exchange for the AVAX tokens and Ava Labs equity (CFTC).
The article said that Roche and Sirer may have had a close friendship that started in academics.
Also, that the two of them had shared a co-working space in August 2019, just before the agreement was formed for him to give legal services in return for token supply. Roche remarked:
“Gün [Sirer] … we did a deal, where I agreed to provide legal services in exchange for a certain percentage of the token supply.”
Additionally, in another video, Roche is heard claiming that they “used [litigation services] as a strategic tool to help Ava Labs.”
I feel I am one of the top 10 [crypto specialists] in the world, and I use half the firms in this industry. I also know where this market is headed. I’ve been inside each and every cryptocurrency firm, the video claims.
In one video, Roche said that he “ensures that the SEC and CFTC have other magnets [Avalanche rivals] to go after” and added that “litigation may be a tool to competition.”
Ava Labs CEO Emin Gün Sirer fiercely refuted the claims made in the report, calling them “conspiracy theory drivel,” and vowing that his company would “never participate in criminal, immoral, or just plain wrong activity.”
The website for Roche Freedman LLP states that Roche has at least 24 lawyers working for it, with offices in Miami, Boston, and New York City.
Roche studied law at North Western University, and in July 2017, he co-authored an article for the Wall Street Journal titled “Why Bitcoin is flourishing.”
On July 1, 2022, Roche Freedman LLP filed a high-profile lawsuit against Solana Labs, Solana Foundation, and co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko, alleging that Solana had broken U.S. federal securities laws by marketing unregistered securities to American investors.
About two weeks earlier, on June 15, Roche Freedman LLP filed a complaint against Binance, alleging that the cryptocurrency exchange had sold UST to investors in an illegal manner.
