As per the U.S. Justice Department filing, the government of the Bahamas has acquired the services of a U.S. law firm to handle legal matters and communicate with the U.S. government and media about the failure of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange.
According to William Baldiga, a partner at the Boston firm Brown Rudnick and one of the primary lawyers on the FTX bankruptcy and U.S. regulatory and criminal investigations said that the firm provides advice to the Bahamian government.
After being charged with scamming investors and stealing funds from client deposits by U.S. authorities, FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested on December 12 in the Bahamas, where the exchange was headquartered, and extradited to the United States.
Sam Bankman-Fried Will Plead Not Guilty
BREAKING: Sam Bankman-Fried expected to plead not guilty on #FTX fraud charges.
— whalechart.org (@WhaleChart) December 30, 2022
As per a source, Bankman-Fried will plead not guilty when he appears in federal court in Manhattan on Tuesday. Although he admitted that there were problems with FTX’s risk management in the past, he maintained that he was not personally responsible for any criminal wrongdoing.
Attorneys for FTX in the U.S. bankruptcy case have claimed that Bahamian authorities are colluding with Bankman-Fried to sabotage the case and steal assets from creditors. The Bahamas Securities Commission skipped out on commenting on the claim earlier this month.
The panel has accused former FTX CEO John Ray of giving a “false image” of the Bahamian government’s reaction to the collapse of FTX. On Thursday, the agency said it had temporarily assumed custody of more than $3.5 billion of digital assets held by FTX’s Bahamas subsidiary.
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