On Tuesday, four U.S. Congressmen sent a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) addressing their regulatory approach to crypto.
The Congressmen, namely Tom Emmer, Patrick McHenry, Jim Jordan, and James Comer, issued a letter addressed to Gary Gensler, Chairman of SEC, and mentioned the commission’s approach under Biden’s government to be inconsistent and hypocritic in record-keeping of the laws.
In the letter, an incident from 2013 is mentioned wherein the current SEC chief was serving as the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). At that time, he used his email account for official business purposes, as inspected by the agency’s Office of Inspector General (OIG).
The incidents come to light in investigating the collapse of one of the crypto firms. The investigation found that the commissioner used his email account about 7,005 times to conduct official business related to the matter; however, in defense, Gensler had stated his inability to access his official email id at home. Further, it also states that the commission’s officials use other communication platforms like Signal, Whatsapp, Teams, and Zoom for formal business. They haven’t also been producing records in response to open-record requests.
As detailed in the letter, the lawmakers commented on the commission’s approach as they have consistently failed to keep up with the system’s transparency and record-keeping laws; however, they have been incessantly enforcing record-keeping laws on private businesses. The commission has recently penalized 16 firms more than $1.1 billion for allegedly being unable to maintain and preserve electronic communications.
According to the lawmakers, it is unethical for the commission to continuously charge institutions for non-compliance when continuously violating the transparency laws. They have claimed Biden’s administration to be biased towards SEC and transparency from regulators to be an inherent right of American citizens.
The letter has suggested the commission under Gensler practice the accountability he preaches and has set November 15 as the deadline for answers to their questions. The questions in the letter include SEC’s compliance with transparency laws and if the employees have been using their email ids for business communication alongside others.