On Thursday, Bram Cohen, the creator of BitTorrent, accused in twitter that Justin Sun is not clearing the final payment of TRON’s $140 million acquisition of BiTorrent Inc. Justin Sun, the CEO and founder of TRON has been involved in a number of controversies recently and this latest news keeps the young CEO in the limelight for the wrong reasons.
Anybody know if Justin Sun is hard up for cash? He isn't letting the last payment for BitTorrent get out of escrow.
— Bram Cohen (@bramcohen) July 25, 2019
Cohen also claimed that escrow agency responsible for the deal has not received “signoff” on the remainder of the funds. TRON Foundation’s head of business development Roy Liu responded to Cohen by saying,” the money in escrow is not considered Justin’s cash. Justin has signed release agreement. Buyer/seller lawyers will follow up and settle.” Cohen was not happy with this explanation as he retorted back by asking,” do you have an explanation for not signing off on it two months ago when it was scheduled to happen?”
Sun denied the allegations later, stating that,” “I totally understand he wants his money, but right now it has nothing to do with me.” Later, Cliff Edward, director, global communications at Tron Foundation added that, “Justin signed the release on Monday, and disbursements are now in the lawyers’ hands.”
TRON acquired BitTorrent in June of 2018 and the acquisition was also soaked with controversy. It was revealed in later stages that NEO and EOS offered higher bids amounting to $170 million for BitTorrent. Cohen left the company just ahead of its acquisition and his statements at that time suggested that he was not excited about the transfer.
Recently, Sun was in the headlines for postponing a charity lunch with Warren Buffett in San Francisco for which he had paid $4.6 million. He stated that the reason for the postponement was “kidney stones”. The value of the company’s cryptocurrency, also called Tron, dropped by 20 percent after this postponement news. Earlier it was reported by Caixin, a Chinese business magazine, that Sun is being investigated for potential illegal business activities and money laundering and is facing an exit ban from China. It was also alleged that the ‘AccompanyingMe’ app with which he is involved, is being used for illegal sexual crimes.
Sun used twitter and Chinese social media accounts to refute these allegations and added that the report was “completely untrue.” He also broadcasted a live video of himself from his office in San Francisco. He surprised everyone by publishing an apology on Weibo for indulging in “vulgar hype and marketing behavior.” but deleted the message shortly afterwards.
With things looking tough for the generally charismatic CEO of TRON, it is expected that he will make the right moves in near future to remove the negative publicity gathering around his business.
