By Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Maxwell book
SDNY COURTHOUSE, April 11 – Sam Bankman-Fried of FTX was indicted in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, leading to his arrest in the Bahamas on December 12, and extradition to the US on December 21.
On February 28, with Bankman-Fried free on bond, FTX's Nishad Singh pleaded guilty to six criminal charges. Inner City Press put the charging document on its DocumentCloud here.
On March 10, Judge Kaplan held a proceeding. Inner City Press was there and live tweeted, thread here.
On March 27, Bankman-Fried's lawyers filed a sealed version of conditions it said DOJ agreed to - adding that "the Government does not object to the sealing request." Full letter on Patreon here.
On March 28, another superseding indictment but continued kid gloves on detention. The US wrote: "On March 27, 2023, the grand jury returned a thirteen-count superseding indictment [with] an additional count for conspiracy to violate the anti-bribery provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act."
From the complaint, Paragraph 103: SFB "and others known and unknown, at least one of whom was first brought to and will be arrested in the SDNY..." Paragraph 105: SBF "directed and caused the transfer of at least $40 million in cryptocurrency intended for the benefit of one or more Chinese government officials in order to influence and induce them to unfreeze the Accounts."
The US letter said, "The new charge does not change the Government’s position with respect to the appropriate conditions of release" - why not?
On April 11, SBF's lawyers wrote in: "On behalf of our client, Samuel Bankman-Fried, we respectfully submit this letter to request a one-week enlargement of time to implement certain specific bail conditions set forth in the Court’s March 28, 2023 order (the “Order”) (ECF No. 118). The defense previously requested a one-week extension on April 4, 2023, which the Court granted. (ECF No. 122). The Government consents to this second request. Over the past two weeks, the defense has been able to implement all of the bail conditions set forth in the Order, with one exception: the conditions related to the cellphones used by Mr. Bankman-Fried’s parents. The defense recently received new cellphones for Mr. Bankman-Fried’s parents installed with the monitoring software specified in Appendix 1. Our technical consultant has now tested the phones and it appears that the monitoring software cannot, in fact, automatically photograph the device’s user every five minutes as required by the Order. Accordingly, we respectfully request the Court to grant a one-week extension of the deadline to implement the bail conditions related to the parents’ cellphones so that the defense can find different monitoring software that will conform to the requirements of the Order. In the meantime, we respectfully request that Mr. Bankman-Fried’s parents be permitted to use their existing cellphones." Letter on Patreon here.
The inexplicable double standards continue.
More with analysis on Substack here
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