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Administrative stays have been issued in the SEC’s and CFTC’s respective civil lawsuits against EmpiresX and its owners.
Judge Altonaga suspended the proceedings on September 19 and September 28 in anticipation of serving defendants Emerson Pires and Flavio Goncalves.
EmpiresX was managed by Pires and Goncalves. The two accused individuals, who are also facing criminal charges, have taken refuge in Brazil since discovering they were being investigated.
Accordingly, the SEC and CFTC have begun serving the defendants abroad in accordance with the Hague Convention.
While that will ultimately solve the problem, there is the present difficulty of the lengthy procedure involved.
Given that service under the Hague Convention can take “six to eight months, or more,” the court has stayed both proceedings to “ensure the orderly progression of the case(s).”
Beginning on October 7th, the CFTC will be required to provide Status Reports every 60 days outlining service advancement. The SEC is now tasked with doing the same as of October 28.
Once the court has ordered that all defendants have been served in response to a party’s motion, the matter will be put back on the live docket.
After the last defendant is served, the other defendants have until the same deadline to produce either a consolidated response or individual responses.
Both Joshua Nicholas and Empires Consulting Corp., the other named defendants, have been served.
Each month, I’ll check back in on the case dockets at the SEC and CFTC to see if anything new has been added.
