(Republicaninformer.com)- FTX founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried is to plead “not guilty” to various fraud and money laundering charges, according to The Daily Wire. The disgraced billionaire is reportedly being accused of mingling funds from the cryptocurrency exchange and his sister firm Alameda Research.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) were investigating Bankman-Fried and the FTX crash after it was revealed that the founder moved $10 billion in clients’ assets from the exchange into Alameda, according to a report from American Pigeon. The move caused a liquidity crisis and sent the crypto world crashing, resulting in the loss of the industry’s total market capitalization of $200 billion.
Bankman-Fried is expected to plead not guilty in front of U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan. Caroline Ellison, the former chief executive of Alameda Research, and Gary Wang, a co-founder of FTX have reportedly submitted guilty pleas.
Damien Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York issued a statement saying that if anyone else was part of the misconduct at the cryptocurrency exchange, then “now is the time to get ahead of it.”
“We are moving quickly, and our patience is not eternal,” he added.
He has been indicted by Williams of conspiracies to commit wire fraud, commodities fraud, securities fraud, money laundering, and defraud the Federal Election Commission through campaign finance violations. He is reportedly the Democrats’ second-largest donor and the GOP’s tenth-largest donor.
Of the $37 million donated to Democrats, over $20,000 went to the CFTC’s Senate committee’s chairwoman, Democratic Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow.
Bankman-Fried was recently released on a $250 million bond and allowed to stay with his parents at their California home. The home, with an equity of about $4 million, is reportedly the collateral for the bond.
