By Dana Malcolm
Staff Writer
#USA, December 26, 2022 – Sam Bankman-Fried has landed in the United States after agreeing to be extradited and faced US courts on Thursday. Since the beginning of FTX’s downfall, the founder and former CEO had maintained his innocence.
In tweets in the days immediately after the collapse, when thoughts of a hack were still swirling and the public had yet to learn the extent of the mismanagement he had said,
“I’m putting all the details together but I was shocked to see things unravel earlier this week. I’ll be writing a more complete play-by-play post soon, but I want to make sure I get it right when I do.” he added “My goal—my only goal—is to do right by customers.—I’m meeting personally with regulators and working with teams to do what we can for customers. And after that, the investors. But first, the customers.”
He detailed his version of what happened on Twitter. SBF presented the issue in its simplest form, as essentially the company was overdrawn, with more money coming out of its coffers than it was supposed to. Seemingly remorseful, he has repeatedly claimed innocence and ignorance of the massive wrongdoing at his company, but insisted he was doing everything he could to get his clients their money by making such statements.
“I was on the cover of every magazine and FTX was the darling of Silicon Valley. We got overconfident and carefree—I thought of myself as a model CEO who wouldn’t get lazy or detached. Which made it all the more devastating when I did. I’m sorry. Hopefully people can learn from the difference between who I was and who I was
could have been – Anyway – none of that matters now. What matters is doing the best I can. And doing everything I can for FTX customers.”
He claimed that his extradition was also for the benefit of his clients. Through his tweets, Bankman-Fried is portraying himself as the picture of repentance. It contradicts the revelations of the December 13 congressional hearing, which the new CEO John Ray III attended. Ray shared the egregious mismanagement and almost no protection of customer funds, painting a picture of the companies’ cross-dealing and other gross negligence that should never have happened. Bankman-Fried did not mention the gaping holes in company policy or record keeping in his multiple tweets.
Al Green, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations and Panelist at the Congressional Hearing on the FTX Collapse said this
“Mr. Bankman-Fried has pretty much shown that he just made a big mistake and that he was doing the best he could to be a servant of great service to humanity.” referring to the SBF’s impressive background in education, he said: “It seems to me that there might be some malice here – I find it hard to believe that we are dealing with conscious stupidity. It seems to me that you must be really talented to do all these things to the extent that they did and to do them successfully as long as he was able to do these things. They just don’t come from ignorance and stupidity.– it just seems to me that we are dealing with more than honest ignorance.”
He put the question to Ray, who said they were still investigating and would have more information at a later date.
As for Bankman-Fried, whether his hands are clean or he’s committing the crime of the century will be up to the US justice system to find out, at least two other executives have pleaded guilty to criminal charges.
