Telegram will enter into a settlement agreement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), according to the suit of which the Manhattan federal court prohibited Pavel Durov from launching the Telegram Open Network (TON) blockchain platform and the Gram cryptocurrency.

As Durov himself previously stated, the court decided that “Gram cannot be distributed not only in the United States, but throughout the world”.

Now he has agreed to pay US authorities $18.5 million in fines and return $1.22 billion to investors.

In a message on his official Telegram channel, Durov noted:

“The settlement proposed today reaffirms our commitment to return the remaining funds to customers in accordance with the Purchase Agreements. We have already paid out more than $1.2 billion to customers directly and in the form of loans.”

The Telegram founder notes that he agreed to the settlement because further consideration of the lawsuit had “limited meaning”.
“We welcomed the opportunity to resolve it without admitting or denying our responsibility”, the statement said.

Under the agreement, the company will be required to provide 45 days’ notice to the SEC of its intent to participate in the issuance of “cryptocurrencies, digital coins, tokens, or any similar assets issued or transferred using distributed ledger technology”.

Durov said the company will continue to work on other innovative projects and expressed hope that “the regulatory environment for blockchain technology in the United States will become more favorable in the future”.

Investors invested $1.7 billion in the project to create TON and GRAM, expecting to receive 2.9 billion tokens. Among those who invested in the project, RBC names Russian businessmen Roman Abramovich, David Yakobashvili, Sergei Solonin, and former Minister for Open Government Affairs Mikhail Abyzov.

However, even before Pavel Durov closed the project, the TON Labs developers who collaborated with him launched the Free TON platform. They intended to transfer free TON tokens to project participants. This happened without Durov’s participation and contrary to his decision to postpone the launch of TON to April 2021, Forbes wrote.