Finally, there is something for Ripple to cheer about as the man who was behind the $1.3 billion lawsuit filed against the San Francisco-based remittance payments firm is now going to step down from his executive post. Marc P. Berger, the Acting Enforcement Director of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), has revealed his intentions to leave the agency before the end of this month.
As per a press release by the SEC issued recently, Berger will no longer be serving as the agency’s Acting Enforcement Chief starting from the next month.
During his service, he was involved in some high profile lawsuit actions against different cryptocurrency firms. One of these high-profile lawsuits was against Ripple Labs, in which Berger played a crucial role. On the 22nd of Dec in 2020, SEC filed a lawsuit led by Marc P. Berger against the remittance payments company, its founder Chris Larsen, and its Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Brad Garlinghouse. This lawsuit has made things extremely worse for Ripple and its native cryptocurrency XRP.
However, it might be a relieving point for both XRP and its parent company Ripple Labs, as Berger is now stepping down from his role. Ripple might consider a settlement with the SEC now in order to resolve the entire matter without dragging it into court. Both of the parties have to come face to face in the court next month, where they will present their statements. The entire matter revolves around the fact of whether Ripple’s XRP is a security or not.
Back in the month of August in 2020, Berger became the Deputy Director of the Division of Enforcement of the US SEC. Later on, in the month of December, the former enforcement chief of SEC Stephanie Avakian left the agency, and as a result of that, the role of Berger shifted to Director of the agency’s Enforcement Division.
Ripple’s XRP had to go through a lot of trouble following this lawsuit as it was struck hard by a long list of cryptocurrency exchanges that announced to halt trading and deposits for the fourth-ranked digital currency in the light of the SEC’s lawsuit.