Telegram Investor Documents Say BNY Mellon, Credit Suisse Helped Process $1.7B ICO

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Telegram told investors it was using Wall Street megabanks BNY Mellon and Credit Suisse to move and store fiat currency raised in last year's blockchain token sale, court filings show.

It followed a similar filing on Friday from the SEC, which has accused Telegram of selling unregistered securities and is seeking to block the issuance of the Telegram Open Network project's tokens.

Attached to the new document are Telegram messenger exchanges between Hyman and some of the investors who were negotiating the purchase of the tokens, known as grams, that would run on the TON blockchain.

During one such chat, Telegram employee Shyam Parekh explained to an investor how the funds were supposed to reach the company.

"We will receive the funds through BNY, which will forward the funds to CS AG for final credit to Credit Suisse AG," Parekh wrote, providing the international bank code for wiring money to Credit Suisse via the Swift network.

It's not clear from the filing whether the investors Parekh was communicating with used either bank to send funds to Telegram.

According to messages exchange between Telegram employees and several U.S.-based investment funds, Kleiner Perkins, in particular, secured a $30 million confirmed allocation of grams; Lightspeed China, the regional arm of Lightspeed Ventures, invested $25 million; and FBG Capital put in $10 million.

Answering a question about "Where's all this $ coming from" to Telegram in another chat, Hyman said "Big Russia, CIS bid, quite a lot in Israel and Pavel fan club." Pavel Durov is Telegram's secretive CEO; the Commonwealth of Independent State is an association of former Soviet republics, including Russia.

On Friday, the SEC asked the court to request the help of the High Court of England and Wales to help obtain Hyman's testimony and documents related to Telegram's token pre-sale.

The court has previously ordered the deposition of Telegram's CEO Durov, vice president Ilya Perekopsky and investor relations officer Shyam Parekh.

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