{"id":5932,"date":"2024-10-07T17:57:13","date_gmt":"2024-10-07T17:57:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/sam-bankman-fried-targets-sullivan-cromwell-in-appeal-against-conviction\/"},"modified":"2024-10-07T17:57:13","modified_gmt":"2024-10-07T17:57:13","slug":"sam-bankman-fried-targets-sullivan-cromwell-in-appeal-against-conviction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/?p=5932","title":{"rendered":"Sam Bankman-Fried targets Sullivan & Cromwell in appeal against conviction"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Sam Bankman-Fried\u2019s criminal conviction over the collapse of FTX should be vacated in part because the cryptocurrency exchange\u2019s former lawyers at Sullivan & Cromwell \u201cdid an enormous amount of investigative work for the prosecution\u201d, attorneys for the former billionaire have argued.<\/p>\n

In a brief filed with the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Friday, Bankman-Fried\u2019s counsel claimed he was denied a fair trial by \u201cfederal prosecutors eager for quick headlines\u201d who co-opted former colleagues at the elite New York firm into gathering evidence for the government.<\/p>\n

S&C, which advised FTX before providing counsel to the cryptocurrency exchange\u2019s bankruptcy, \u201cworked hand-in-glove with the prosecutors to charge and imprison Bankman-Fried, in ways that far exceeded normal \u2018co-operation\u2019,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n

In one instance, S&C lawyers \u201cproactively recommended new areas of inquiry and helped guide prosecutorial strategy\u201d, Bankman-Fried\u2019s lawyers claimed, citing a December 2022 email to prosecutors, in which the law firm highlighted data \u201cthat resembles a transfer discussed by Sam Bankman-Fried in Signal chats\u201d about a $45mn hole in an FTX balance sheet.<\/p>\n

The firm collected more than 27mn documents for the government and provided notes of interviews with 24 FTX employees to prosecutors, they added.<\/p>\n

Bankman-Fried, once one of the most celebrated American entrepreneurs, was sentenced to 25 years in prison in March over his role in the spectacular collapse of FTX, after being found guilty on seven counts of fraud and money laundering last year.<\/p>\n

In their appeal against his conviction on Friday, Bankman-Fried\u2019s lawyers claimed FTX had \u201cfaced a liquidity crisis, not a solvency crisis\u201d at the time of its implosion and that the government\u2019s allegation at trial that $10bn was \u201cmissing\u201d was wrong, given that former account holders are set to receive cash worth more than 100 per cent of their official claims.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe alleged victims didn\u2019t \u2018lose all their money\u2019,\u201d they wrote, adding that many of the investments Bankman-Fried made with customer deposits, such as a $500mn bet on AI start-up Anthropic, \u201cwere prescient\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They further blamed the conviction on S&C and John Ray III, who was installed to oversee the bankruptcy, claiming the law firm was part of a disturbing trend in which prosecutors are handed inculpatory evidence \u201con a silver platter\u201d while exculpatory evidence is withheld.<\/p>\n

S&C has faced repeated questions over its role as FTX\u2019s bankruptcy counsel, given the legal work it did for the exchange in the months leading up to its implosion in November 2022.<\/p>\n

In a paper published in March, two prominent law professors claimed S&C put its own interests before that of the exchange\u2019s stakeholders, writing that the firm\u2019s \u201capparent conflicts of interest permeated FTX\u2019s bankruptcy filing and every aspect of the case\u201d.<\/p>\n

The law firm\u2019s alleged conflicts are also being investigated by independent examiner and former prosecutor Robert Cleary, who was asked to look into the matter by the judge overseeing FTX\u2019s bankruptcy.<\/p>\n

In the first version of his report in May, Cleary largely absolved S&C of disqualifying conflicts of interest that would have undermined its restructuring advice. He recommended further inquiry into other matters, including some pre-bankruptcy transactions involving S&C, and is due to deliver his second report later this month.<\/p>\n

In a previous court filing in Bankman-Fried\u2019s criminal case, US prosecutors said the FTX debtors and S&C had \u201cno involvement in any significant aspect of the government\u2019s investigation and prosecution\u201d. Sullivan and Cromwell has previously called allegations against it \u201cbaseless\u201d.<\/p>\n

Sullivan and Cromwell, the FTX debtors and the US attorney\u2019s office for the Southern District of New York, which brought the case, declined to comment. <\/p>\n

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Video: FTX: the legend of Sam Bankman-Fried | FT Film<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free Sam Bankman-Fried\u2019s criminal conviction over the collapse of FTX should be vacated in part because the cryptocurrency exchange\u2019s former lawyers at Sullivan & Cromwell \u201cdid an enormous amount of investigative work for the prosecution\u201d, attorneys for the former billionaire have argued. In a brief filed with the US Court<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5933,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_lock_modified_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[206],"tags":[621,617,622,620,616,619,618],"class_list":{"0":"post-5932","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-financial-crime","8":"tag-appeal","9":"tag-bankmanfried","10":"tag-conviction","11":"tag-cromwell","12":"tag-sam","13":"tag-sullivan","14":"tag-targets"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5932\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}