Petition calling for resignation of SEC chairman

16,000 people have signed a petition on Change.org calling for the resignation of SEC Chairman Gary Gensler

The community wants SEC chairman’s resignation

A petition on the dedicated website Change.org launched a few days ago by a citizen, Roy Ferneini, has reportedly already gathered more than 16,000 signatures. As a motivation for the request, the petition on the association’s website reads:

“Gary Gensler is complicit in criminal activities perpetrated by Citadel in naked short selling and dark pool abuse. He is guilty of obstruction of justice due to his lack of enforcement of the laws pertaining to naked short selling. If Gary Gensler is not going to do his job as SEC’s chief, we demand his immediate resignation. We need a fair market; the SEC chief is expected to protect investors not criminals”.

The attack against the SEC chairman reportedly stems from the well-known battle he is waging against cryptocurrencies, which are considered dangerous to financial stability and their use by criminal organizations. Dozens of lawsuits have been filed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission against crypto companies, which are being accused of not having authorizations to sell financial products.

The head of the SEC is also accused of having shady dealings with some traditional financial giants, such as Blackrock, Vanguard and Citadel. The petition against SEC Chairman Gary Gensler refers specifically to his alleged failure to protect retail investors from fraud due to naked short selling and dark pool abuse by Citadel Securities, which is accused of market manipulation.

On 27 July, attorney John E. Deaton reportedly revealed that part of Gensler’s assets, held in Annabel Lee LLC and a Marital Trust, would actually be managed by Vanguard Group. The SEC chairman would have a net worth of more than $100 million, of which Vanguard would manage about 90%.

Gary Gensler’s suspicious transactions

According to the lawyer, the SEC chairman also allegedly engaged in short-selling operations of cryptocurrency-related securities, such as AMC Theatres and GameStop, through Vanguard Group and BlackRock. 

This would clearly be very serious, not only because of the office held by Gensler, but also because the SEC has long been taking a very tough stance against cryptocurrency-related companies.

In late June, Gensler had defined Bitcoin as a commodity and cryptocurrencies as securities, and that it was therefore necessary to regulate them as such.

This is why it is reported that most of the signatures collected would come from circles linked in some ways to the crypto world, which has long challenged the overly intransigent line taken by Gensler with the digital asset sector, such as the lawsuit filed against Ripple more than two years ago.