The independent corruption watchdog pressurizes the SEC to interrogate Hinman’s dispute of approaches while he was a part of the firm.
Empower Oversight is a major non-profit corruption watchdog. The agency is asking for an inquiry in reference to the disobedience of rules by an ex-employee of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Ethics Department that had reportedly led to extreme losses for many.
William Hinman, the previous director of SEC’s Corporate Finance, has been blamed for generating a conflict of interest when he was an employee at the SEC division. As per the reports provided by Empower Oversight, Hinman had supposedly an economical interest in a legal firm Simpson Thatcher, an ally at Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA), while he worked at the SEC. EEA is an agency initiated to promote Ethereum as an enterprise option.
Read related article: Court approves Ripple Labs’ request to examine SEC officials’ Videos
Empower Oversight observed that Hinman failed the SEC’s Ethics office regulations by refraining to call Simpson Thatcher a part of EEA while he was giving a controversial speech in the year 2018, where he termed ETH as a non-security.
“Based on my understanding of the present state of Ether, the Ethereum network and its decentralized structure, current offers and sales of Ether are not securities transactions,” based on a declaration given by Hinman in the year 2018.
It is quite noteworthy that Hinman played a major role in the currently happening lawsuit between Ripple and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Before the controversial speech by Hinman, Ripple was very near in competition with Ethereum crossing which the altcoin would have been the second major virtual asset after Bitcoin.
Minutes after Hinman was done with his declarations, several traders thought that the SEC does not take Ethereum as a security, thus marketing the global adoption of ETH, leading to XRP’s adoption dropping sharply. In December 2020 the announcement came stating that the SEC has charged Ripple.