Kyle Roche withdraws from several lawsuits

Kyle Roche withdraws from several lawsuits

Kyle Roche, the lawyer who was recently outed for his alleged involvement in a secret pact to harm players in the crypto industry, is withdrawing from several class action lawsuits he initiated.

Roche has requested to withdraw as one of the attorneys for planned lawsuits against several companies, including Bitfinex, Tether, DigFinex and Global Trade Solutions, a Court document filed in the Southern District of New York on Wednesday. The lawsuits allege that the crypto companies were involved in manipulating the digital asset market.

His motion was filed under a rule that says a party's attorney can only be relieved or transferred by order of the court.

He has not requested withdrawal in other cases brought against Solana, Dfinity, Celsius, Binance.US and Block.one. However, the document states that he is no longer involved in the law firm's class action practice.

The withdrawal follows claims from a new website CryptoLeaks that Kyle and Ava Labs, the core developer of the Avalanche blockchain, secretly reached an agreement in September 2019. As part of the agreement, Kyle was ordered to sue Ava Labs' competitors, distract regulators, and pursue CEO Emin Gün Sirer's personal vendettas against individuals, the site's authors claimed.

CryptoLeaks released a series of 25 videos totaling about 12 minutes of footage in which Roche described himself as Ava Labs' in-house crypto expert and admitted to ensuring that the Securities and Exchange Commission remained occupied with other objectives to pursue.

Roche said its crypto expertise comes directly from its pursuit of lawsuits against “half of the companies in this space.”

Blockworks confirmed by digital media forensics experts Siwei Lyu that the videos were real and there were no traces of alterations.

Roche's relationship with Ava Labs

After the leaked videos were published, Sirer attempted to distance his company from Roche. In a statement, he said Roche's claims in the videos were fabricated and designed to impress a potential business partner, and that Roche was "an attorney at a firm we retained in the early days of our company ... one of more than a dozen law firms we retain for tax, corporate, regulatory and human resources matters."

However, the close relationship between Roche and Ava Labs leaders is clearly ongoing and personal. In a video, Roche stated that his equity stake in Ava Labs was "one-third" that of Ava Labs COO Kevin Sekniqi and that he was temporarily living with Sekniqi in Miami at the time of the video recording.

“I trust Gün and Kevin like brothers,” said Roche.

Roche published a Statement In it, he identified the meeting shown in the video with Christen Ager-Hanssen, a Norwegian venture capitalist who intended to “deceive and entrap” him due to a business relationship with Dfinity founder Dominic Williams.

Ager-Hanssen - who confirmed on Twitter that he was the hidden person in the videos - denied working for Williams he said he had never met and called on CryptoLeaks to release all footage featuring Roche.

Ager-Hanssen released a December 28, 2021 email from Sam Wang, Ava Labs' former Director of Business Development for Enterprise & Institutional, describing Roche as "spearheading [Ava Labs'] litigation funding initiatives."

Sam Wang, Kyle Roche and Roche Freedman did not respond to Blockworks' request for comment by press time.

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The post “Kyle Roche withdraws from multiple lawsuits” is not financial advice.