The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is dropping its civil-fraud case against crypto billionaire and World Liberty Financial investor Justin Sun, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The dismissal comes after a company allegedly controlled by Sun agreed, without admitting or denying wrongdoing, to pay a $10 million fine to settle the SEC’s allegations that its employees manipulated the market for Sun’s cryptoasset TRX. The settlement remains contingent on court approval, the newspaper said.
The muted outcome of the 3-year investigation marks a stark reversal in Sun’s fortunes that can be traced in part back to the second Trump administration’s efforts to embrace the crypto sector. Sun also reportedly invested at least $75 million in World Liberty Financial, the crypto company run by the Trump family, and was a top investor in the $TRUMP meme coin, according to the Journal.
Under the Biden administration, the SEC sued Sun in 2023, alleging that he and his companies artificially inflated trading activity in the token by directing employees to buy and sell it among themselves in what regulators described as wash trading. SEC officials said that the activity made TRX appear more liquid and popular, drawing in outside traders and allowing Sun to sell more of the token while helping stabilize its price, according to the report.
The SEC had first asked the court to pause its lawsuit against Sun in February of last year. Around the same period, the agency also voluntarily dropped several high-profile cases against major crypto firms, including Coinbase Global and Binance, and closed investigations into others, according to the Journal.
Read more at The Wall Street Journal