FTX's ex-top lawyer is reportedly cooperating with investigators, revealing details about what Sam Bankman-Fried did with customer funds

Zahra Tayeb
Updated 2 min read
91
Sam Bankman-Fried
FTX's founder and ex-CEO Sam Bankman-Fried.Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

  • FTX's ex-top lawyer has cooperated with US agencies investigating the crypto exchange, per Reuters.

  • Daniel Friedberg spoke about how Sam Bankman-Fried used customer funds to finance the FTX empire.

  • FTX's ex-CEO is facing fraud charges, and billions of dollars of customer funds are missing.

FTX's former top lawyer has cooperated with US authorities investigating the crypto exchange's collapse and told them about how Sam Bankman-Fried's handled customer funds, according to a Reuters report.

Daniel Friedberg, until recently the chief regulatory officer at FTX, met with more than 20 investigators on November 22, Reuters reported Thursday, citing a source familiar with the matter.

Friedberg shared his knowledge about the way Bankman-Fried used the billions of dollars of funds to finance his crypto group, per the report. He also spoke about conversations between FTX execs on that activity and gave insight on how FTX's sister trading arm Alameda Research operated.

Since FTX collapsed in November, reports have emerged that billions of dollars in trading customer funds were funneled to Alameda to prop up the crypto hedge fund. Other reports have revealed unusual business practices, such as FTX having customers wire money to a fake electronics retailer — again, to ultimately support the trading arm.

New York prosecutors have set up an FTX Task Force to trace and recover the missing customer money, estimated to total over $2 billion at least. Meanwhile, Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty to the fraud and other criminal charges laid against him in US court.

In a now-deleted blog on FTX's website in 2020, Bankman-Fried wrote that Friedberg was FTX's legal advisor "from the very beginning," and said he had been "with us through thick and thin," per Reuters.

FTX's former regulatory chief was willing to share information about the crypto exchange right after it filed for bankruptcy on November 11, the report said. He then requested FTX waive his attorney-client privilege so he could work with the authorities.

"I want to cooperate in all respects," he told two FBI agents in an email at the time, seen by Reuters.

Investigators from the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the Securities and Exchange Commission were at the meeting with Friedberg at the office of the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York in late November, Reuters said.

Friedberg and his lawyer, Telemachus Kasulis, and FTX did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment. The US agencies involved did not respond to a similar request.

Read the original article on Business Insider

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