The founder of the ill-fated FTX cryptocurrency platform, Sam Bankman-Friedpromised this Friday to testify by videoconference before a committee of the United States House of Representatives next Tuesday.
In a Twitter message in which he responded to a challenge from Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Bankman-Fried assured that he still does not have access to many of his professional or personal data, but even so, he is willing to testify on December 13. “There’s a limit to what I can say and I can’t be as helpful as I’d like to be,” lamented the disgraced entrepreneur.
Since FTX’s failure, Bankman-Fried maintains that he was not aware that client funds were redirected to their partner investment firmAlameda, one of the main reasons that led it to bankruptcy.
In a virtual interview broadcast live by the newspaper The New York Times In November, Bankman-Fried said he did not “knowingly” mix funds, that he was not the one running Alameda and that he has only been aware of what was happening in recent weeks, when the facts have been disclosed publicly.
FTX filed for bankruptcy on November 11 and at the end of that same month, the new managers of the company appeared for the first time before the bankruptcy court of the state of Delaware (USA) to begin the restructuring process.
Lawyers for the new board and its current head, John Ray, argue that a “substantial amount” of the company’s assets may have been stolen or are missing. The new managers have also denounced that the company had a “total absence of corporate controls” and a lack of “reliable financial information”.
The platform, which came to be valued at 32,000 million dollars, could have more than a million creditors around the world. So far, the company has admitted that it owes more than $3 billion to its top 50 creditors.
However, Bankman-Fried blames the bankruptcy in part on the massive sale of cryptocurrencies that occurred at the beginning of the year. For the founder of the company, that sale halved FTX’s guarantee, of about 30,000 million dollars.
At that point, according to Bankman-Fried, the sale of cryptocurrencies continued, combined with a credit crunch and a “flight from the bank,” which reduced the collateral to $9 billion before FTX filed for bankruptcy.
