FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried denies US witness tampering claims

Mark Cohen, an attorney for Bankman-Fried, asked the federal judge presiding over the case to allow his client to meet with some of the people involved in FTX, saying that his client needed to participate in his defense. Cohen Says Bankman-Fried Uses Signals to Reach Out to FTX’s Current General Counsel weWhich, a witness, “was merely an innocuous attempt to offer assistance in FTX’s bankruptcy process and does not reflect misconduct that warrants the sanctions proposed here by the government.”

Federal prosecutors on Friday asked a judge to impose new bail conditions on Bankman-Fried, who has pleaded not guilty to fraud after being contacted by an FTX employee.

On January 15, Bankman-Fried sent a signal message and email to the employee, referred to as “Witness 1”: “I would really love to reconnect and see if there is a way for us to have a constructive relationship.” Use each other as resources when possible, or at least check things out with each other.”

Prosecutors saw that as an attempt to influence the witness’s possible testimony and asked the judge to ban Bankman-Fried from contacting current and former FTX employees — other than her father — except in the presence of legal counsel. The government has also asked the court to restrict the use of Bankman-Fried’s encrypted messaging application.

Prosecutors wrote in their filing that the investigation revealed that Bankman-Fried used auto-delete functions on Slack and Signal to conduct the FTX business and that “the offending conversation” was lost.

Bankman-Fried’s defense team was surprised by prosecutors’ filing on Friday night, after more than a week of discussions between the two sides about imposing further sanctions that all but agreed to.

Cohen wrote, “The government clearly believes that a one-sided presentation – intended to cast our client in the worst possible light – is the best way to obtain a result, even if it does not present the full context to the court.” in his response.

Cohen proposed a bail condition that would prevent Bankman-Fried from contacting several former employees, including cooperating witness Carolyn Ellison, former CEO of Alameda Research, and FTX co-founder Gary Wang. Under the defense offer, Bankman-Fried could still speak to her father, Joseph Bankman, Who? was involved with FTX, its therapists and foreign regulators Who? contact him.

Nicholas Biese, a spokesman for Manhattan US Attorney Damian Williams, whose office is prosecuting the case, did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment about the defense’s claims.

Bankman-Fried stepped down as CEO of FTX, the cryptocurrency platform he founded, in November after his empire became worth a billion dollars. The new CEO, restructuring expert John J. Ray III rejects Bankman-Fried’s attempts to help him track down the track. property As part of bankruptcy proceedings.

Ray, who oversaw the liquidation of Enron, said that Bankman-Fried had not told him anything he did not already know. According to Bankman-Fried’s attorneys, since Ray was not CEO until the bankruptcy filing, he was not an “intelligible witness” because he had no knowledge of any of the events alleged in the indictment.

Later Saturday, Lewis Kaplan, the federal judge in Manhattan overseeing the Bankman-Fried case, gave prosecutors until January 30 to respond to a defense request to modify bail conditions.

Kaplan asked the government to provide her with a copy of the signal message and email Bankman-Fried sent to FTX US’s current general counsel, who is a witness in the case.

The judge also warned lawyers that he “expects all lawyers to desist from slanderous characterization of the actions and motives of their opponents.”

Bankman-Fried has been living at her parents’ home in Palo Alto, California, after being released from custody in December on a $250 million bail package. He is accused of perpetrating years of fraud on FTX and allowing customer funds to be used for trading hedge fund Arm Alameda Research and at personal expense.

This case US v. Bankman-Fried, 22-Cr-673, US District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

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