NEW YORK: Attorneys for Sam Bankman-Fried on Saturday (Jan 28) urged a US choose not to ban the indicted FTX cryptocurrency executive from communicating with previous colleagues as aspect of his bail, indicating prosecutors “sandbagged” the procedure to put their customer in the “worst achievable light”.
The lawyers have been responding to a Friday night request by federal prosecutors that Bankman-Fried not be authorized to talk with most workforce of FTX or his Alameda Research hedge fund without attorneys present, or use the encrypted messaging applications Signal or Slack and most likely delete messages instantly.
Bankman-Fried, 30, has been no cost on a US$250 million bond because pleading not responsible to rates of fraud in the looting of billions of bucks from the now-bankrupt FTX.
Prosecutors claimed their request was in response to Bankman-Fried’s current work to contact a opportunity witness versus him, the standard counsel of an FTX affiliate, and was wanted to prevent witness tampering and other obstruction of justice.
But in a letter to US District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan, Bankman-Fried’s legal professionals stated prosecutors sprung the “overbroad” bail situations without having revealing that each sides had been discussing bail around the final week.
“Rather than wait around for any response from the defence, the govt sandbagged the system, filing this letter at 6pm on Friday night,” Bankman-Fried’s legal professionals wrote. “The government seemingly thinks that a 1-sided presentation – spun to put our consumer in the worst attainable light – is the most effective way to get the end result it seeks.”
Bankman-Fried’s lawyers also claimed their client’s efforts to speak to the general counsel and John Ray, installed as FTX’s main govt throughout the bankruptcy, had been makes an attempt to offer you “assistance” and not to interfere.
A spokesman for US Legal professional Damian Williams in Manhattan declined to remark.