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Comment by Reelin | Hacker News Reader

Telegram Messenger LLP is (was?) UK based, but it looks like it's being gotten rid of. [1]

From the same article:

> Telegram Messenger LLP was established in February 2014 by two companies – Dogged Labs Ltd. (British Virgin Islands) and Telegraph Inc. (Belize). In May 2018, however, Dogged Labs was substituted for Telegram Messenger Inc., which is also registered in the British Virgin Islands.

How the SEC (or the US in general) intends to undertake effective enforcement action against a cryptocurrency provider operating out of either of those jurisdictions is beyond me. They don't exactly have a physical product whose import you can ban...

[1] https://news.bitcoin.com/pavel-durov-closes-uk-based-company...

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> How the SEC (or the US in general) intends to undertake effective enforcement action against a cryptocurrency provider operating out of either of those jurisdictions

If you sell securities to American investors, you’re subject to U.S. securities law. This is true for practically every financial market.

As for exerting influence, I can’t think of many easier foreign jurisdictions for U.S. law enforcement to get its way in than BVI, particularly post-Brexit.

I'd quibble that it's your customers that fall under American jurisdiction, and that in order to retain them you voluntarily choose to adhere to the applicable regulations. Naturally US companies wouldn't be legally permitted to purchase their tokens, but other than using that as a form of coercion I don't see how enforcement could be achieved.

Regarding BVI, I'm admittedly not familiar with them or their legal system. Do they have financial enforcement agreements (or some other arrangement) in place with the US?

> you voluntarily choose to adhere to the applicable regulations

This is a fine philosophical argument. But practically, it isn’t how any financial laws work.

(To illustrate why, imagine an American fraudster selling Ponzi schemes to Germans. Would it make any sense to say the fraudster is beyond German law? Of course not.)

> Do they have financial enforcement agreements (or some other arrangement) in place with the US?

BVI is a British Overseas Territory. It’s a common Europe-U.S. linkage.

If they ignore U.S. court orders, everything from asset freezing and seizure to extradition is on the table.

> Would it make any sense to say the fraudster is beyond German law? Of course not

But this is only the case because the US has agreements in place with Germany (and the EU more generally I think?). Were the fraudster located in a less "friendly" territory, they might indeed be beyond reach. For example, I don't generally expect Russia to be cooperative in extraditing anyone to the US anytime soon.

As to British Overseas Territories, the Wikipedia page wasn't particularly enlightening as to what legal arrangements might currently be in place. I'll take your word that a relevant framework exists. As such, I do wonder how Telegram is planning to navigate this.

> this is only the case because the US has agreements in place with Germany

The agreements don’t make the law, they facilitate enforcement. If you sell Ponzi schemes to Germany from Russia, you’ve still broken German law. It will just be difficult to enforce.

The U.S. has extensive law-enforcement coöperation agreements with the U.K. BOTs are “under the jurisdiction and sovereignty of the United Kingdom... with the UK retaining responsibility for defence and foreign relations“ [1].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Overseas_Territories

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