Sam Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty to US criminal charges over the dramatic implosion of FTX, the crypto exchange he founded.
The plea was entered in a Manhattan federal court on Tuesday, just weeks after Bankman-Fried’s December 13 arrest in the Bahamas at the request of US federal prosecutors and subsequent extradition.
The eight charges against Bankman-Fried include wire fraud, conspiracy to commit commodities and securities fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and campaign finance violations.
The 30-year-old appeared in a blue suit and spotted tie and spoke only through his lawyers. Bankman-Fried’s counsel requested that the judge protect the identities of two additional guarantors for his $250mn bail bond, which is secured against his parents’ California home, where he has been staying. The judge granted the application pending any potential challenges from the media or other parties.
October 2 was set as the tentative start date for a four-week trial, during which federal prosecutors said they would show that Bankman-Fried committed a “wide-ranging fraud on [FTX] customers . . . on investors and on lenders” to FTX’s affiliated trading arm Alameda Research.
Assistant US attorney Danielle Sassoon told the court Bankman-Fried had also laundered money through “political donations and charitable donations” and that the unlawful activities mentioned in the indictment took place “with the defendant’s knowledge and at his direction”.
Prosecutors told the court they would enter hundreds of thousands of documents into evidence in the coming weeks, including those obtained from political campaigns, internet service providers, banks and former FTX employees. Sassoon said the government was still issuing subpoenas and obtaining warrants to carry out “extended searches”.
Bankman-Fried’s lawyer, Mark Cohen, clashed with federal prosecutors over the details of their request to add a condition to the bail agreement that would prevent his client from accessing or transferring FTX or Alameda assets, after news reports that cryptocurrency from wallets related to Alameda had been moved in the weeks since his arrest.
Bankman-Fried has tweeted that he was not behind the transfers, a claim that was reiterated in court. Sassoon told the judge that while the government did not have evidence of Bankman-Fried being behind the transactions, the former FTX boss had “tweeted knowing false statements before”. The judge, Lewis Kaplan, granted the condition.
Prosecutors also told the court that given the collapse of the bankrupt FTX may have caused losses for as many as 1mn creditors, it would notify victims via a website, rather than individually.
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Bankman-Fried is also facing civil cases brought by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission, which last month accused the former FTX chief of defrauding investors who put $1.8bn into the company since its founding in 2019.
His plea comes shortly after former top associates at FTX entered guilty pleas last month.
Caroline Ellison, former chief executive of Alameda Research, and Zixiao “Gary” Wang, a co-founder of FTX, both pleaded guilty to fraud last month and have agreed to co-operate with US authorities.
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