Two of the largest banks in the US are reportedly locked in a legal battle over a $481 million commercial property loan.

Wells Fargo is suing JPMorgan Chase, the largest back in the US, over accusations it greenlighted a real estate loan even though it allegedly knew that the financial statements were fraudulent, reports Reuters.

In 2019, JPMorgan issued a loan to real estate development and investment firm Chetrit Group to finance the purchase of 43 multi-family buildings with 8,671 apartments across 10 states.

Acting as the investors’ trustee, Wells Fargo alleges that JPMorgan and Chetrit knew that the sellers had fraudulently inflated the buildings’ historical net operating income by 25% even before closing the deal at $522 million.

A property’s historical net income is a financial metric that measures the income generated by a building over a specific time frame. A property’s past earnings are typically used to assess its potential value.

Wells Fargo claims that JPMorgan approved the overvalued property deal to reap millions of dollars in fees, thinking that the assets would eventually be dumped on investors who wouldn’t realize the buildings were not as profitable as declared on paper.

Chetrit’s loan turned sour in 2022 and, in the process, Wells Fargo says investors in the trust have lost tens of millions of dollars.

“[JPMorgan] had an obligation to engage in due inquiry to determine the scope of the fraudulent reporting. Instead, [JPMorgan] plowed ahead as if nothing unusual had happened without even bothering to correct known errors in the numbers.”

Wells Fargo is asking the court to order JPMorgan to either pay for damages or repurchase the loan and make the investors whole.

JPMorgan and Chetrit have not yet issued a statement regarding the case.

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Telegram founder Pavel Durov, detained in France since last August, was granted temporary permission to leave the country for Dubai.

Agence France Presse (AFP) first reported the news on Saturday. Shortly afterward, the cryptocurrency market reacted.

Toncoin (TON), the digital token linked to Telegram’s Telegram Open Network (TON), saw a dramatic surge in its trading volume, increasing by more than 15% following the announcement.

The TON token, currently valued at $3.34, has been a key development of Telegram’s blockchain initiatives.

In addition, Notcoin (NOT), a token for a popular tap-to-earn mini-app on the platform, also experienced a rally, rising by over 12.7% at the time of publication.

Durov, a billionaire Russian exile who founded the popular messaging app Telegram in 2013, faces multiple charges linked to allegedly enabling organized crime.

Authorities allowed Durov to depart for Dubai, AFP reported citing an unnamed source. The move follows a ruling by an investigating judge who accepted Durov’s request to modify the conditions of his supervision several days ago.

Durov, 40, has been under investigation for several infractions, including accusations related to terrorism, drug trafficking, fraud, money laundering, and child abuse content on the Telegram platform.

He was initially arrested in August following his indictment, which led to a ban on his departure from the country.

Durov addressed the legal challenges in a statement posted to his official Telegram channel in September. Expressing his surprise at the charges, Durov criticized French authorities for bypassing official communication channels with Telegram’s EU representative and instead questioning him directly. He argued that holding a CEO accountable for crimes allegedly committed by others on a platform—especially one operating under pre-smartphone laws—was a “misguided approach.”

In his statement, Durov also defended Telegram’s moderation practices, highlighting the platform’s daily efforts to remove harmful content and its established connections with NGOs for urgent requests. Despite the legal troubles, he reaffirmed his commitment to ensuring the safety and security of Telegram’s vast user base, which now totals nearly one billion people.

As the investigation continues, Durov’s legal battles are likely to remain a topic of significant attention, especially as Telegram’s cryptocurrency initiatives continue to expand.

Whether the latest legal developments will have any long-term effects on Telegram’s operations or the value of its associated tokens remains to be seen.

The layer-1 blockchain MultiversX (EGLD) continues to lead the digital asset gaming sector in the realm of development activity, according to the crypto analytics firm Santiment.

Santiment notes on the social media platform X that MultiversX, formerly known as Elrond, registered 212.17 notable GitHub events in the past 30 days.

The Ethereum (ETH)-based virtual reality platform Decentraland (MANA) ranks second, clocking 168.93 events, and the Ethereum layer-2 protocol Skale Network (SKL) is a distant third with 41.07.

MultiversX and Decentraland have occupied the number one and two spots in previous months as well, according to Santiment.

Santiment notes that it doesn’t count routine updates and uses a “better methodology” to collect data for GitHub events based on a “backtested process.”

The analytics firm has previously said that heavy development activity centered around a crypto project is a positive indication that could mean that the developers believe the protocol will be successful. It also indicates that the project is less likely to be an exit scam.

MultiversX is a distributed, proof-of-stake blockchain network that is decentralized via more than 3,500 nodes. The project aims to help developers build next-gen applications.

The project’s native token, EGLD, is trading at $18.10 at time of writing. The 139th-ranked crypto asset by market cap is up more than 3% in the past 24 hours.

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