Crypto Twitter Concludes “Roche Lied” in Avax Scandal

The jury’s in, and Avax has lived to survive another day. Following on from yesterday’s tea surrounding Ava Labs supposedly paying lawyers to sue their competitors, it nows seems that the internet is siding against the allegations.

According to a report from whistleblower Crypto Leaks, Ava Labs allocated 1% of the AVAX token supply and Ava Labs stock to law firm Roche Freedman to stage litigations and class-action lawsuits against its rivals.

In leaked video footage, Kyle Roche, founder of the law firm, claimed Roche Freedman was paid to attack competitors such as Dfinity and Solana.

Read more: “Avax is Basically Hitler” – Egregious Attack or Just Another Crypto Conspiracy Theory?

In a piece on Medium, Ava Labs CEO Emin Gün Sirer responded to the claims circulating on the internet. “Ordinarily, we would not make a statement about a scurrilous hit-piece on disreputable websites like Cryptoleaks,” he writes in his opening paragraph.

“To dignify such an obvious fraud on us with a response usually makes no sense. Everyone should be able to see right through it.”

Sirer goes on to explain how “disheartened” he is to see people in the crypto space “pay any attention to such obvious nonsense.”

Describing the allegations as “categorically false”, Sirer said Roche was just trying “to impress a potential business partner by making false claims about the nature of his work for Ava Labs.”

“Neither I, nor anyone else at Ava Labs ever directed Roche in his selection of cases. We do not receive materials or information from him, and we do not entrust our legal affairs to him.”

Sirer clarified that Roche “filed all their lawsuits independently for us”, “is not responsible for regulatory matters for Ava Labs” and Kyle Roche himself “is not on our executive team… he has no say in our business deicsions.”

In a separate tweet, Sirer described Roche’s equity claims of 1% as a “blatant lie.”

Meanwhile, Roche also released a statement on Medium, claiming the video footage was recorded in a meeting with Christen Ager-Hanssen who “works for Dominic Williams, the creator of ICP Token, and the defendant in a high-profile securities fraud litigation my firm brought against him.”

“Mr. Ager-Hanssen requested a meeting with me under the false pretense of venture capital investment in a technology startup, but his real motives are now clear: to deceive and entrap me,” Roche claims.

According to Roche, the remarks he made were taken out of context. “Statements in the video to the contrary are false, and were obtained through deceptive means, including a deliberate scheme to intoxicate, and then exploit me, using leading questions. The statements are highly edited and spliced out of context,” he said.

Roche further supported the team at Ava Labs too. “In all of my dealings with Emin Gün Sirer and the rest of the Ava Labs team, they have always acted with the highest integrity. They have never asked that I do anything underhanded, illegal or of questionable ethics, and I never would.”

Crypto Twitter Responds

Online support for Ava Labs appears to be strong. Even those such as FatMan Terra who were sceptical after the Crypto Leaks have since sided with Sirer and his team. “Oh, so Roche lied. Checks out. Thanks for clearing this up,” FatMan replied to Sirer’s Medium article.

Other replies on Sirer’s article itself include “Avalanche remains the best tech in the space and no amount of this FUD is going to undo that” and “Keep building, let speak jalous ones.”

Meanwhile, responses to Roche’s article are far less sympathetic. “You are so rekt,” a comment with 200 likes simply reads. “Pretty pathetic on Dfinity’s part. Gives me even more confidence in Ava Labs as a business and Avalanche as a blockchain tbh,” another with 47 likes said.