SBF’s Defense Seeks to Dismiss Most Criminal Charges Against FTX Founder

Sam Bankman-Fried, the founding father of the failed cryptocurrency trade FTX, has launched his first complete authorized argument in response to fraud prices leveled towards him by prosecutors.

In Monday’s filings in a Manhattan federal courtroom, SBF sought to dismiss a number of allegations and asserts that the regulation agency Sullivan & Cromwell, which represents FTX within the chapter proceedings, has acted as an agent of the federal authorities in developing the legal case towards him.

The FTX founder, who at the moment resides in his guardian’s residence in Palo Alto below home arrest, faces a complete of 13 legal prices starting from cash laundering to wire fraud.

His authorized workforce is now making an attempt to have 10 of those prices dismissed. The filings contend that 4 of the fees, which embrace overseas bribery, marketing campaign finance, and financial institution fraud, breach points of the extradition course of between the U.S. and the Bahamas, the place Bankman-Fried was arrested in December.

The protection attorneys additionally contend that the remaining six prices are too ambiguous or produce other authorized shortcomings and will due to this fact be dismissed.

It ought to be famous that Bankman-Fried has not disputed three of the fees: conspiracy to commit commodities fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, and conspiracy to commit cash laundering.

Prosecutors have till Might 29 to answer Bankman-Fried’s dismissal request, whereas U.S. District Choose Lewis Kaplan is ready to listen to arguments on June 15.

FTX attorneys ‘a public mouthpiece for the federal government’

In line with SBF’s attorneys, the regulation agency and FTX could have been concealing vital proof, de facto turning into the federal government’s representatives within the legal case towards their consumer.

“FTX’s authorized advisors went to the federal government to accuse Mr. Bankman-Fried behind his again with out realizing the total info, and finally pressured him to step down as CEO,” the attorneys wrote.

The lawyer went on so as to add that “relatively than look ahead to conventional civil and regulatory processes following their bizarre course to handle the scenario, the Authorities jumped in with each toes, improperly looking for to show these civil and regulatory points into federal crimes.”

Moreover, SBF’s authorized counsel asserts that FTX, its present CEO John Jay Ray III, and Sullivan & Cromwell “have acted as a public mouthpiece for the federal government” and “have assumed the position of prosecutor by publicly labeling” Bankman-Fried as “‘the villain,’” the filings say.

The protection additionally argues that the collapse of FTX, as soon as the third-largest cryptocurrency trade when it comes to buying and selling quantity with a valuation of $32 billion, was the results of final 12 months’s “crypto winter,” which noticed the value of Bitcoin and plenty of different main digital currencies plummet.

Representatives for FTX and Sullivan & Cromwell didn’t instantly reply to Decrypt’s requests for remark.

Sam Bankman-Fried’s estimated internet price of $26 billion, largely constructed on the again of the cryptocurrency increase, was largely eroded after the collapse of FTX in November final 12 months. The trade confronted a surge of buyer withdrawals after experiences emerged that it had mingled belongings with Alameda Analysis, an affiliated cryptocurrency buying and selling agency.

Within the days following the FTX collapse, experiences alleged that SBF routinely took buyer funds, transferred them to different corporations, together with Alameda Analysis, and used them for his personal functions.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have accused Bankman-Fried of misappropriating billions of {dollars} from FTX buyer funds to cowl losses at Alameda, buy property, and interact in a straw-donor scheme to make political contributions.