Sam Bankman-Fried says that at FTX he never tried to commit fraud.

Sam Bankman-Fried says that at FTX he never tried to commit fraud.

Sam Bankman-Fried said that he "never tried to commit fraud", but admitted that he had made "many mistakes" before the collapse of his $ 32 billion cryptocurrency empire, which inflicted considerable financial losses to the users of his popular FTX trading platform.

The founder of the now bankrupt crypto exchange ftx contested "knowingly" customer money with those of Alameda Research, his own commercial group.

"Obviously I made many mistakes or things that I would give everything to be able to do them again," said Bankman-Fried during an interview at the New York Times.

Bankman-Fried, who practically appeared from the Bahamas, grinned nervous, repeatedly bobbed with his foot and seemed involuntarily trembling when he was far-aware of the issues such as the use of prescription medication by FTX employees and the improper money transfer, whether he knew about and disregarded and compliance rules, customer accounts, the customer accounts endangered.

"I have positions and position risks on the stock exchange and in particular Alamedas and.

"There is a significant discrepancy between the true, certified financial data.

Bankman-Fried gave the interview just a few weeks after FTX had previously applied for the darling of the global crypto industry, US bankruptcy protection. The collapse of FTX was triggered by panicked customer withdrawals and crashed into the cryptoma markets. It was finally discovered that up to $ 8 billion in funds was missing.

The collapse of FTX is examined by law enforcement officers and financial supervisory authorities in the United States and on the Bahamas.

The 30-year-old admitted that his lawyers had told him that he should not agree with interviews with journalists in the face of several investigations and pending legal proceedings. "I think I have the duty to speak and explain what happened," he said. "I don't understand what it brings to sit in a room and pretend that the outside world does not exist."

"I don't concentrate on that," he said when he was asked if he was worried about possible criminal responsibility. "I had a bad month," he added to the laughter of the audience.

After the bankruptcy application, Bankman-Fried was replaced by John Ray as Chief Executive by John Ray, a restructuring expert who represented the plaintiffs in the fraud cases Bernard Madoff and Allen Stanford to handle Enron. Ray said he had never seen "such a complete failure of the company controls".

"The [Company] did not have the kind of payout controls that I think are appropriate for a company," Ray said in court files and added that corporate funds for the purchase of houses and personal items were spent on FTX employees and consultants.

During the interview on Wednesday, Bankman-Fried defended his position as one of the most productive donors in the US Democratic Party in the last election cycle.

"My donations mainly served to prevent pandemic, and they dealt with primary elections in which there were candidates who openly spoke out to do things to prevent the next pandemic."

Bankman-Fried will continue to be confronted with questions and accusations of prosecutors, supervisory authorities, investors and up to 1 million creditors due to the lack of means of FTX. When asked whether he would leave the Bahamas to get to the United States, he said that he was "not surprised" if he were asked to testify to the collapse of the stock exchange in one of the numerous hearings.

A class action lawsuit that was submitted on Wednesday in the name of investors in the USA claimed that FTX was "really a house of cards, a ponzi scheme where [FTX] customer funds mixed between their opaque companies".

Source: Financial Times

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