Hello, This Article Is Addressed to Our Cryptowealth Account Holders And

Hello, This article is addressed to our CryptoWealth account holders and email list subscribers, and all those who may be interested in our project and products. We anticipate that it will become part of an ongoing series of public blog posts about the Ascension/Lyra project and the cryptocurrency industry in general. Today we will be considering: 1) an alarming recent development; 2) some reflections on this development; and 3) what we can all do about it. What's Up It has come to our attention that several people in our group who live in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area as natives call it) have recently received phone calls from a man named Craig Gallagher (not sure about spelling), who claims to work for the OSC. (The Ontario Securities Commission is essentially the counterpart of the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) in the USA, only for the province of Ontario.) This fellow is asking questions about purchases and holdings of Lyra, seeking copies of marketing materials, etc. In plain English this is known as a fishing expedition, trolling for disgruntled buyers hoping to locate at least a few who might be willing to make a signed complaint, in order to supply a legal pretext for making trouble for everyone. (If anyone holding Lyra is in fact disgruntled or concerned about something, we hope that they'd let us know, like the people who got these calls did.) In other words, standard operating procedure for authorities tasked with tackling the threat posed by the cryptocurrency industry to the dominance of established interests and firms – more on this point later. Our view is that anyone who contacts you asking impertinent questions about your private business deserves to be told to mind their own. “Am I obliged to answer your questions? No? Then forget it.” End of conversation. If you've purchased Lyra you've done nothing wrong. After all it's crypto, not cocaine. It's legal. But as any competent defense lawyer will tell you, there is absolutely nothing to be gained, ever, by “talking to the police.” And that goes double when you're wholly innocent. Unfortunately we all live in an increasingly totalitarian world. Anyone much over 30 has probably witnessed a good deal of the deterioration, if they've been paying attention. (In a way that's kind of the whole point of crytpocurrency, to move the needle back the other way a bit; but again, more on that later.) Ontario is sadly no exception. What Could Go Down The OSC regulations provide that the commission can serve a summons to any Ontario resident to appear and answer questions, possibly (therefore probably) under oath. Moreover the recipient of such a summons is bound by an automatic gag order not to tell anyone about their summons. The complete OSC regs can be found here: https://www.canlii.org/en/on/laws/stat/rso-1990-c-s5/latest/rso-1990-c-s5.html Sections 11-18 are relevant to investigations and summonses. If anyone has received a summons, they are effectively prohibited from notifying us, as we shall see (but mere phone calls are quite a different matter). So we don't expect to see any copies. However, the rules do stipulate what must be included. Section 13(1) reads: A person making an investigation or examination under section 11 or 12 has the same power to summon and enforce the attendance of any person and to compel him or her to testify on oath or otherwise, and to summon and compel any person or company to produce documents and other things, as is vested in the Superior Court of Justice for the trial of civil actions, and the refusal of a person to attend or to answer questions or of a person or company to produce such documents or other things as are in his, her or its custody or possession makes the person or company liable to be committed for contempt by the Superior Court of Justice as if in breach of an order of that court. The gag order part is contained in Section 16(1) which reads: Except in accordance with section 17, no person or company shall disclose at any time, except to his, her or its counsel, (a) the nature or content of an order under section 11 or 12; or (b) the name of any person examined or sought to be examined under section 13, any testimony given under section 13, any information obtained under section 13, the nature or content of any questions asked under section 13, the nature or content of any demands for the production of any document or other thing under section 13, or the fact that any document or other thing was produced under section 13. So let's sum up: the laws of Ontario give these unelected government bureaucrats the ability to require anyone to testify under oath, even against themselves, and never to tell anyone (other than their attorney if they have one) what they were asked, what they answered, or even the fact that they were ever questioned at all. They might be wiser to make up a lie for their spouse, their boss at work, or anyone else to explain where they were that day. Stop and let that sink in for a moment. What Could Be Done If the OSC goes this route, and starts handing out summonses, rest assured the boilerplate language deployed will make a big deal out of the point above about being “liable to be committed for contempt by the Superior Court of Justice.” So it makes sense to take a look at the rules concerning contempt proceedings in civil actions. (Contempt in the case of criminal cases is a separate topic, and as we saw above the OSC has summons authority “as is vested in the Superior Court of Justice for the trial of civil actions”.) The Rules of Civil Procedure re contempt can be found here, in section 60.11: https://www.canlii.org/en/on/laws/regu/rro-1990-reg-194/latest Looking at this section, things suddenly appear a lot brighter and less scary. The most relevant bits are these: (1) A contempt order to enforce an order requiring a person to do an act, other than the payment of money, or to abstain from doing an act, may be obtained only on motion to a judge in the proceeding in which the order to be enforced was made. R.R.O. 1990, Reg. 194, r. 60.11 (1). (2) The notice of motion shall be served personally on the person against whom a contempt order is sought, and not by an alternative to personal service, unless the court orders otherwise. R.R.O. 1990, Reg. 194, r. 60.11 (2). (3) An affidavit in support of a motion for a contempt order may contain statements of the deponent’s information and belief only with respect to facts that are not contentious, and the source of the information and the fact of the belief shall be specified in the affidavit. So it turns out that “being liable to be committed for contempt” simply means that the OSC has the right (but not the obligation) to go before an actual judge and explain, by means of a signed affidavit (executed by the OSC agent under penalty of perjury, as with all affidavits), why the court should order the party summoned to comply with the summons, and/or punish them in some way for their non- compliance. The judge has broad discretion in dealing with such a motion. He or she may dismiss it, perhaps on grounds that the summons was abusive or unjustified, or constituted an overreach of the OSC's authority. The judge can also uphold the summons, modify or limit it, even rewrite it completely. And yes, the judge can impose a fine or even a jail sentence (a few days is typical) for the failure of the witness to comply. But precisely because of these latter circumstances, the highest level of legal standards (as in a criminal case) must be upheld. For example, you cannot be compelled to be a prosecution witness, you are innocent until proven guilty, and contempt must be proved beyond reasonable doubt. And contempt can usually be purged before any punishment is imposed, simply by complying with the judge's order. In other words the most likely results of failing to obey a summons from the OSC are these: 1. Instead of just typing up whatever he wants on his computer, now the OSC agent has to go before the court and legally justify in an affidavit why he wants to question you, and state the reasons why it's so imperative that you be compelled to answer his list of questions. And if that affidavit is looking tough to write in a way that won't make him look like a complete fool, the agent may well decide not to file a contempt motion at all. There's also the very real issue of how many trips to the well the agency can expect to make, before the court begins to resent all the docket space being taken up by contempt motions. The only way the court could stem that flow and express its displeasure would be to start rejecting the agency's motions pretty much on sight. Which is exactly what it should do, and possibly would do, were it to become aware that agencies like the OSC were papering the town with summonses as a matter of routine.

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