Crypto lawyer Roche obsessed on 2 fronts after leaked videos

Kyle Roche, a lawyer specializing in crypto issues, is fighting a two-front battle as client Ava Labs tries to distance itself from the lawyer and a Norwegian investor says he should be disbarred after leaked videos focused attention on his legal tactics.

Videos of Roche and Christen Ager-Hanssen apparently discussing an investment opportunity in a litigation funding product during two meetings in London in January surfaced Monday on a website called Crypto Leaks, which claimed the lawyer and Ava Labs were involved in a secret pact to undermine the latter’s blockchain rivals via US litigation.

Roche said the videos – which appeared as a series of short clips in two different settings, many less than a minute long – were a setup and that Ager-Hanssen was working with Dominic Williams, CEO and founder of Dfinity, a cryptographic firm that Roche has filed a class action against for insider trading and securities fraud.

“When I agreed to the meeting,” Roche said in a Medium post, “I was unaware that Ager Hanssen specializes in what he calls “conflict management” for “eccentric billionaires” like Williams, where he uses illegal and underhand funds. , including “covert recordings” and “social engineering”, to solve their legal problems.”

One set of video clips took place in a conference room and the other in a restaurant, where Roche appeared to be intoxicated.

“It’s clear Kyle let himself down and is working in an attempt to sell a venture capital investment,” said a source familiar with the situation.

Ager-Hanssen confirmed he was the unseen other party speaking in the videos and insisted he had never met Williams. He also identified Mauricio Andres Villavicencio de Aguilar — described in an email as a London-based business consultant who introduced Ager-Hanssen to Roche — as the only other person in the room and thus the only possible source of the videos.

“There were three people in the meeting, there was Kyle, there was Mauricio, and there was me,” says Ager-Hanssen. “He must have been the one recording because he was sitting in that seat.”

Villavicencio de Aguilar did not respond to email and phone requests for comment. Dfinity’s Williams also did not respond to inquiries about Roche’s claim. Roche confirmed in his Medium post that the videos were real, though he said they were “heavily edited and spliced ​​out of context.”

The Crypto Leaks narrative accompanying the videos described Roche as pursuing aggressive tactics against companies that were rivals to Ava, but it does not appear to allege any specific illegal activity.

Ager-Hanssen encouraged site to publish the full videos in Twitter posts on Wednesday. “I think everyone, including me, wants to see that. I want to see Kyle Roche disbarred. He is a disgraced attorney in violation of, among other things, attorney-client privilege.”

Ager-Hanssen told Forbes he was “shocked” by how closely Ava Labs worked with Roche. He said the video clips were not taken out of context, but he would not be more specific about the content of the conversations.

Meanwhile, Emin Gun Sirer, Ava’s CEO, distanced his company from Roche, which he said in a Medium post was only involved in specific legal actions on behalf of Ava and had no other company role. But Ager-Hanssen provided a pitchbook for Roche’s litigation funding vehicle Ryval, the apparent subject of the discussions, which Ava had previously said it helped develop. An email provided by Ager-Hanssen purportedly from Sam Wang, Ava’s former director of business development, described Roche as “at the forefront of our litigation funding initiatives.”

Ryval’s business model is to stake interests in the outcome of litigation, so investors can fund cases and share in recovery, according to the pitchbook. On his Twitter pageRyval says it is “powered by” Ava Labs’ Avalanche blockchain.

Roche and Sirer, in their separate Medium posts, denied any wrongdoing by them or their companies, and both wrote that the lawyer’s plaintiff representation was a source of discord between their firms.

In a subsequent Twitter mailSirer disputed Roche’s apparent claim to own 1% of the Ava tokens; in one of the videos, the lawyer said he owned “about a point” of the “token supply and equity.” Sirer’s Tweet said the total was “nowhere near 1%.”

It is not the first time that Ager-Hanssen has been linked to hidden recordings. In 2014, DN Magasin appeared, a weekly supplement to the daily newspaper of Norwegian business Today’s business, Ager-Hanssen has always had a hidden microphone with him, both at lunches, dinners and business meetings.