Dominica’s Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit on Monday brushed aside suggestions that the island could come under severe scrutiny after the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged the founder of the blockchain company, TRON, Justin Sun with fraud and securities violations.
Skerrit told a news conference that young Dominicans should instead explore the opportunities made available through the crypto-currency sector and that neither he nor his government could be held responsible for people’s behavior after they had been legitimately in touch with his administration.
“We in Dominica we have to move away from this attitude that we c believe could bring Dominica down …we celebrating it,” he said, adding “there is absolutely no involvement of the government in this whatsoever”.
Roseau had recently entered into an agreement with TRON in what had been described as “the highest level of cooperation between such an enterprise and a sovereign state.”
Roosevelt Skerrit insisted that there is no “regret at all” in a meeting with Sun, adding “we signed an MOU and that was it.
“There is no regret or disappointment…what somebody is involved in their past or future years has no bearings on us. There are Dominicans who go to the United States and receive a Green Card and they get deported back to Dominica because they found themselves in difficulties with the law.”
“I mean do you blame the Green Card system…or the citizenship process of America or do you blame us. NO everyone must stand on their own two feet…and we are not questioning what the SEC has done…”
Last week, in a statement, the SEC unveiled charges against Sun for fraud and securities violations and that it was also charging three companies owned by Sun, “Tron Foundation Limited, BitTorrent Foundation Ltd., and Rainberry Inc. (formerly BitTorrent), for the unregistered offer and sale of crypto asset securities Tronix (TRX) and BitTorrent (BTT).”
“The SEC also charged Sun and his companies with fraudulently manipulating the secondary market for TRX through extensive wash trading, which involves the simultaneous or near-simultaneous purchase and sale of a security to make it appear actively traded without an actual change in beneficial ownership, and for orchestrating a scheme to pay celebrities to tout TRX and BTT without disclosing their compensation,” the statement said.
Skerrit told reporters that the issue of bit coin, crypto currency “is a global phenomena now” and because it is now regulated by central banks yet” there is an issue of proper regulation.
“But this is a global phenomenon and I think it is important that countries like ours, we are to look at the opportunities that these things could provide for our young…people looking for opportunities for higher pay and for better standards of living for themselves.”
He said Dominica can ill-afford to allow the global community to runaway with the crypto-currency sector “and then we trying to 20 years later try to do what many countries have done.
CMC/
