Eight main media firms together with Bloomberg, The Monetary Occasions and Reuters have demanded public disclosure of the 2 people liable for guaranteeing FTX former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s $250 million bond.
In a Jan. 12 letter addressed to New York District Courtroom Choose Lewis Kaplan, attorneys from Davis Wright Tremaine LLP — performing on behalf of the media giants — argued that “the general public’s proper to know Bankman-Fried’s guarantors outweighed their privateness and security rights.”
Media organizations trying to persuade the decide to unseal the identities of Bankman-Fried’s guarantors embrace the Related Press, Bloomberg, CNBC, Dow Jones, The Monetary Occasions, Insider and the Washington Put up.
In making their case, the media’s legal professionals used case precedent from Ghislaine Maxwell’s Dec. 2020 case — the place the bond guarantors’ names weren’t revealed — to argue that Sam Bankman-Fried’s monetary crimes weren’t as critical as Maxwell’s involvement in Jeffery Epstein’s youngster intercourse site visitors ring scandal:
“Whereas Mr. Bankman-Fried is accused of significant monetary crimes, a public affiliation with him doesn’t carry practically the identical stigma as with the Jeffrey Epstein youngster intercourse trafficking scandal.”
In line with a Jan. 12 report from Reuters, Bankman-Fried’s legal professionals beforehand argued that Bankman-Fried’s sureties needs to be saved underneath wraps as Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried — the dad and mom and co-signers of Bankman-Fried’s $250 million bond — have obtained ongoing bodily threats since FTX’s catastrophic collapse in early November.
Associated: Sam Bankman-Fried: ‘I didn’t steal funds, and I definitely didn’t stash billions away’
If the guarantor’s names have been revealed, there can be a “critical trigger for concern” for the security and welfare of these two folks, Bankman-Fried’s legal professionals argued.
On Jan. 3, Bankman-Fried pleaded not responsible towards all eight legal expenses associated to the shock collapse of his former cryptocurrency trade FTX, which incorporates wire fraud and violations of marketing campaign finance legal guidelines amongst different expenses.
