In an open letter on Monday, U.S. Senator Thomas Tuberville (R-Ala.) and five other Congressmen called for an investigation into Prometheum, a special-purpose broker that recently secured federal permissions to offer crypto trading services. Senator Tuberville alleged that Prometheum may have provided false testimony to Congress or violated U.S. securities laws. He pointed to Prometheum CEO Aaron Kaplan’s testimony to Congress that the firm developed its own blockchain platform independently starting in December 2019, which was not reflected in SEC filings that showed the company was still working with Shanghai Wanxiang Blockchain, Inc., a Chinese firm with ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
If Prometheum began developing its own technology platform totally independent of its China-based, CCP-tied partners in December 2019 as Mr. Kaplan attempted to lead Congress to believe in his congressional testimony, why was this not made clear in Prometheum’s SEC filings? the letter said.
The letter follows Senator Tuberville’s opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal, in which he raised concerns about Prometheum’s ties to Wanxiang and its broker approval. Kaplan has previously said that while Wanxiang has a 20% stake in Prometheum, it has no access to the firm’s data and technology, and that the SEC has investigated this relationship. The company has also faced criticism from the crypto industry, with participants arguing that Prometheum’s proposed model for trading crypto assets as securities cannot work.