bankman fried

FTX Paid Crypto Bankruptcy Lawyers $12 Million for Early Work

Bankrupt crypto exchange FTX Ltd. paid its lead lawyers more than $12 million to handle the earliest portions of the closely watched Chapter 11 case, according to a Wednesday court filing.

Law firm Sullivan & Cromwell received a $12 million retainer from an FTX-controlled company shortly before the exchange’s Nov. 11 bankruptcy filing, the filing shows. The firm has drawn a little more than $3 million of that, largely for work done in the days leading up to the rushed bankruptcy filing.

Quinn Emanuel is also working for FTX and its board of directors as special counsel in a litigation capacity, looking for legal claims the bankruptcy estate might be able to bring. The firm received about $575,000 in the three months leading up to FTX’s filing, according to another court filing.

Landis Rath & Cobb, whose lawyers are FTX’s local Delaware counsel, received a $300,000 retainer in the 90 days leading up the filing.

FTX imploded in spectacular fashion in early November, leading to the firing of co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried and a rushed Chapter 11 filing of more than 100 FTX-related companies. In a sign of the hurried pace, FTX didn’t submit typical “first-day” filings until

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December 25, 2022 by ATTORNEY

FTX bankruptcy lawyers say they ‘do not trust’ Bahamas government

Dec 14 (Reuters) – Lawyers for the bankrupt crypto exchange FTX on Wednesday opposed a demand for internal records from an insolvent affiliate based in the Bahamas, saying they “do not trust” the Bahamian government with data that could be used to siphon off assets from the bankrupt company.

Liquidators of FTX’s Bahamian business, FTX Digital Markets, had asked U.S. Bankruptcy Judge John Dorsey to give them access to the U.S. unit’s Slack, Google and Amazon Web Services accounts and data.

At a court hearing in Delaware, lawyers for FTX asked Dorsey to deny the request. They argued that Bahamian regulators had worked with FTX’s founder, the recently arrested Sam Bankman-Fried, to undermine the U.S. bankruptcy case and withdraw assets to the detriment of some creditors.

FTX attorney James Bromley told Dorsey that the Bahamian government has previously obtained information from FTX Digital Market’s liquidators and used it to siphon digital assets away from FTX.

“This is dangerous information,” Bromley said. “We do not trust the Bahamian government.”

The Securities Commission of the Bahamas (SCB) has previously disputed FTX’s “misstatements” about the Bahamian government‘s response to FTX’s collapse.

Asked for comment on Wednesday, the SCB said it “is not

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December 20, 2022 by ATTORNEY

Sam Bankman-Fried’s sudden turn from white knight to detainee

By Hannah Lang

(Reuters) – The sudden fall from grace and arrest of FTX’s former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has stunned investors and crypto enthusiasts who once hailed the 30-year-old American as the savior of the industry.

Bankman-Fried was charged by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Tuesday with defrauding investors in what regulators called “a house of cards,” hours before he was set to appear before a magistrate in the Bahamas.

The fallen crypto entrepreneur was arrested by Bahamian authorities late on Monday at the request of the U.S. government, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement. The Bahamian attorney general said in a separate statement the United States was likely to request his extradition.

Bankman-Fried amassed billions of dollars in personal wealth running FTX, one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges that was valued earlier this year at $32 billion.

Since stepping down, Bankman-Fried has said he no longer has a role at the company. Yet he also told a Vox reporter he believed FTX’s bankruptcy filing was a mistake and has suggested on Twitter and in media interviews that he can still raise liquidity to repay customers. He did not specify how he planned to

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December 16, 2022 by ATTORNEY

BlockFi lawyer tells court priority is to ‘maximize client recoveries’

In this photo illustration, the BlockFi logo seen displayed on a smartphone.

Rafael Henrique | Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

BlockFi plans to reopen withdrawals as part of an effort to “maximize client recoveries,” the crypto lender’s lawyers said at a court hearing Tuesday, a day after the firm filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

BlockFi’s lawyers at that hearing expressed optimism that the firm is in good position to restructure and salvage the business through the bankruptcy process.

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“We want to make sure we get people back as much of their value as quick as we can,” said Josh Sussberg, a partner at BlockFi’s legal firm Kirkland & Ellis.

BlockFi’s collapse was precipitated by exposure to Three Arrows Capital — which filed for bankruptcy protection in July — and to Alameda Research, the FTX trading arm that borrowed hundreds of millions of dollars from BlockFi. FTX had arranged a rescue plan for BlockFi, but that fell apart when FTX faced its own liquidity crisis earlier this month and rapidly sank into bankruptcy.

BlockFi loaned $671 million

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November 30, 2022 by ATTORNEY

Lawyers Detail the ‘Abrupt and Difficult’ Collapse of FTX in First Bankruptcy Hearing

“You have witnessed probably one of the most abrupt and difficult collapses in the history of corporate America,” an attorney for FTX said during the company’s first bankruptcy hearing in Delaware on Tuesday.

James Bromley of Sullivan and Cromwell, representing FTX, detailed the company’s rise and collapse in a brief presentation during the hearing, explaining how the company fell apart within the course of two weeks after bankman-frieds-crypto-empire-blur-on-his-trading-titan-alamedas-balance-sheet/” data-ylk=”slk:a CoinDesk report” class=”link “a CoinDesk report showed that Alameda Research, a subsidiary of the overall FTX group, held an unexpectedly large amount of FTT tokens, issued by FTX itself.

There are over 100 different debtors tied to the FTX group that filed for bankruptcy, another attorney said.

Bromley called the case an “unprecedented matter,” tacitly acknowledging the chaos of FTX’s bankruptcy, which saw a hack the night it filed for bankruptcy and several days before typical first-day filings were available.

The new team at FTX, including new CEO John Ray III, has “assembled a team of investigators,” which includes former enforcement officials with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Commodity Futures Trading Commission and former prosecutors, Bromley said. FTX has also retained crypto analytics firm Chainalysis to help it investigate

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November 26, 2022 by ATTORNEY
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