Eight major media companies including Bloomberg, The Financial Times and Reuters are demanding public disclosure of the two individuals responsible for guaranteeing the $250 million bond of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried.
In a January 12 letter addressed to New York District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan, a lawyer from Davis Wright Tremaine LLP – acting on behalf of the media giant – argued that “the public’s right to know the Bankman-Fried guarantor exceeds the right to privacy and safety.”
Media organizations seeking to persuade the judge to reveal the identity of Bankman-Fried’s guarantor include the Associated Press, Bloomberg, CNBC, Dow Jones, The Financial Times, Insider and the Washington Post.
When making the case, media lawyers used the case precedent of the Ghislaine Maxwell case in December 2020 – where the name of the bail guarantor was not revealed – to argue that Sam Bankman-Fried’s financial crime was not as serious as Maxwell’s involvement in Jeffery Epstein’s son. sex traffic ring scandal:
“While Mr. Bankman-Fried is accused of serious financial crimes, the public’s association with him does not carry the same stigma as Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex trafficking scandal.”
According to a January 12 report from Reuters, Bankman-Fried’s lawyers previously argued that Bankman-Fried’s sureties should remain closed because Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried – parents and co-signers of Bankman-Fried’s $250 million bond – had been accepted. physical threat since the catastrophic collapse of FTX in early November.
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If the names of the sureties were revealed, there would be “serious cause for concern” for the safety and well-being of the two men, Bankman-Fried’s attorney said.
On January 3, Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty to all eight criminal charges related to the shock collapse of the former cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which includes wire fraud and violation of campaign finance laws among other charges.