New York — FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried could face two criminal trials after a federal judge on Thursday granted a request by prosecutors to delay the trial on some of the charges until next year.
Bankman-Fried is due to face trial in October on the charges brought against her last year. In Manhattan, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan set a March 11 hearing date for him on the new charges filed earlier this year.
Prosecutors said they would proceed with the new charges only if Kaplan decided to schedule two trials in the Bahamas – where Bankman-Fried was first arrested.
The judge took the action hours after Bankman-Fried appeared before Kaplan, as her attorneys argued to dismiss allegations that she and other top executives defrauded investors and looted FTX customer deposits in order to make grand Lifestyle can be funded. Kaplan was skeptical of some of their reasoning, but didn’t immediately rule it out.
When a defense attorney finished speaking, the judge told him: “I congratulate you on an extraordinarily imaginative argument.”
Assistant US Attorney Thane Rehn said Kaplan’s charges were brought in a rewritten indictment in February and then in March required approval from Bahamian authorities to comply with the terms of the US extradition treaty, which became active at that time. It was when a man was once seen as a cryptocurrency visionary. From the Bahamas in December.
Those new allegations included a claim that Bankman-Fried directed the payment of a $40 million bribe to a Chinese official or Chinese officials to free up $1 billion in frozen cryptocurrency by early 2021. Was.
Rehan said prosecutors would not continue with new charges until it obtained a waiver, citing an “interest in seeing diplomatic relations”. He said that consultations with Bahamian authorities before unsealing the encroachment indictment gave prosecutors confidence that immunity would be granted.
He said a trial based on the original indictment would last four to five weeks, about a week less than the new charges included.
Bankman-Fried, 31 – referred to as “SBF” by crypto enthusiasts – has pleaded not guilty to all charges as he awaits trial at his parents’ home in Palo Alto, California , where the terms of his $250 million personal recognizance bond are severely limited. Online communication and the ability to transfer money. If found guilty, he could be jailed for years. US Attorney Damian Williams called it “one of the biggest frauds in American history”.
In asking the judge to dismiss the indictment, his attorneys have argued that the allegations are flawed, saying they are repetitive, vague and non-specific and are things that are typically done in regulatory enforcement actions rather than criminal charges. Are transformed.
“They’re trying to criminalize a civil case,” argued lawyer Christian Everdale as he tried to poke holes in the various charges his client faces, including a charge of bank fraud conspiracy. It was Everdale that prompted the judge to praise his “extraordinarily imaginative reasoning”.
Prosecutors argue that Bankman-Fried and other executives defrauded investors in his cryptocurrency operation and made lavish real estate purchases, donated money to politicians and made risky trades at Alameda Research, his cryptocurrency hedge fund trading firm. FTX robbed of customer deposits.
FTX entered bankruptcy in November when the global exchange ran out of money after the equivalent of a bank run.
