Six U.S. congressmen sent a letter to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Department of Justice on the 10th, requesting an investigation into cryptocurrency trading service broker Prometheum, accusing the company of having ties to the Chinese Communist Party and suspected of providing false testimony to Congress or violating U.S. securities laws.

U.S. Senator Tod Tuberville of Alabama and five other members of the House of Representatives sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Gary Gensler on the 10th, accusing Prometheum Co-CEO Aaron Kaplan of possibly providing false testimony at the June 13 hearing on regulatory transparency in the cryptocurrency field.

Prometheum is a digital asset company registered with the SEC and the U.S. Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). Its subsidiary, Prometheum Ember Capital, LLC, was recently approved by the SEC and FINRA as a special purpose broker-dealer (SPBD) for digital asset securities, allowing the company to custody digital asset securities on behalf of retail and institutional clients.

However, the congressmen accused Prometheum of having ties to investors with ties to the Chinese Communist Party, namely Shanghai Wanxiang Blockchain Co., Ltd. and HashKey Digital Asset Group.

According to the letter, Aaron Kaplan testified in Congress last month that Prometheum has independently developed its own blockchain platform since December 2019. However, in a document submitted to the SEC in 2021, Prometheum stated that the company relied on Wanxiang. Therefore, lawmakers called on Merrick Garland and Gary Gensler to investigate the matter.

Prometheum once said that there was no basis

Cointelegraph reported that many Republican congressmen often mentioned concerns about relationships with Chinese entities or the Chinese government when talking about digital asset regulation. Former Senator Pat Toomey and Minnesota Congressman Toom Emmer have both warned against the use of digital RMB in the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.

Aaron Kaplan and another co-CEO Benjamin Kaplan wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal last month to refute that the doubts about Prometheum's relationship with China were "groundless" and based on outdated information. In October 2021, Prometheum severed all intellectual property and technology links with Wanxiang, preventing Wanxiang and its subsidiaries from obtaining any information that could put the United States or its citizens at risk.