TON investor lost the lawsuit against Telegram

The court dismissed Igor Chuprin’s lawsuit and ordered him to cover Telegram’s $700 000 costs

05.04.2022 - 08:00

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What’s new? Igor Chuprin, investor and founder of Zotobi Management, sued Telegram in May 2020. The plaintiff demanded compensation of 100% of the money invested in the TON project. In February 2022, the London Court of International Arbitration held a hearing, following which Chuprin’s claim was dismissed.

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What else is known about the process? In 2018, Igor Chuprin invested $1 million in the TON blockchain project. After the project closed in May 2020, the Telegram founder offered investors either to reimburse 72% of the funds immediately or leave it as a loan to receive 110% of the investments until April 2021.

Igor Chuprin declined the offer to lend the funds and returned $720 000 of the million invested. The plaintiff sued Telegram to recover the balance of $280 000. The court denied Chuprin’s compensation and also ordered him to cover Telegram’s costs of $700 000 and legal fees of £55 944. The court’s main argument was that Chuprin had signed an agreement to buy the tokens, which outlined the risks of this transaction.

What had happened before? TON is an open-source blockchain platform project with Gram as its internal cryptocurrency. Pavel Durov raised $1,7 billion from investors in closed ICO rounds in 2018 to develop it. However, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) saw numerous violations of the law during the token sales and decided to ban the distribution of tokens among TON investors. After the project was shut down, Pavel Durov returned most of the invested funds to his partners.

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