SEC Reveals Telegram's Communications With Investors, Seeks to Question Advisor

The SEC considers grams unregistered securities - an allegation Telegram has repeatedly denied.

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov described Hyman in January 2018 as the chief investment advisor at Telegram and the person who "Runs the distribution of Grams," the SEC says.

In one email, Hyman said that Telegram "Decided for regulatory reasons that we will never do any form of direct public offering, the public will be able to buy grams once network is working ... not from Telegram directly."

According to the communications between Hyman and one of the investors' representatives, Telegram's advisor would regularly ask for updates on the secondary market of grams.

The filing contains, among other attachments, an email exchange between Telegram CEO Pavel Durov and some of the prospective TON investors in the beginning of 2018.

The last emails sent between Tenreiro and Campbell attached to the filing are dated Nov. 27.In addition to Hyman's testimony, the SEC is also seeking to obtain his written communications with Telegram's leadership and investors, documents about his employment at Telegram and his own investment in grams.

According to the SEC information, Hyman left his job at Telegram and is now working at Gram Vault, the custodian for grams that earlier claimed to be working with TON's largest investors.

Insisting that grams were securities by design, the SEC writes that Telegram allowed the investors to buy grams with a goal to later resell them with profit on a broad secondary market and did not take steps against that.

"Telegram's marketing materials reasonably led purchasers of Grams to view them as an investment into a common enterprise from which they could hope to profit based on Telegram's efforts to develop a business," the SEC said.

As a result, the investors "Acquired substantial quantities of Grams that would far exceed any purported use of the Grams in whatever ecosystem Telegram promised in the future."