After spending four days testifying in his criminal fraud trial, Sam Bankman-Fried has stepped down from the stand, with U.S. Assistant Attorney Danielle Sassoon making his exit a notably painful one. Judge Lewis Kaplan signalled the end of testimony when he announced the jurors were to be sent home from the Manhattan Court yesterday shortly after midday. As closing arguments are scheduled to take place at 9:30 a.m. ET today, the damage inflicted on Bankman-Fried’s defence has been exceptionally potent.
Prosecutors assert that the ex-billionaire improperly used money taken from FTX customers in order to fund several of his own projects, amass luxury beachfront property in the Bahamas, and district funds to US political campaigns. To this argument, Bankman-Fried testified that he had already been made aware as early as 2020 that FtX held monetary assets under the domain of affiliated hedge-fund Alameda research. Although SBF admitted to not having much present-day involvement in the firm’s operations, he did recollect an invitation to dine with Bill clinton and Tony Blair– which followed two months after the freeze of customer withdrawals amid a liquidity shortage. To conclude, he confirmed he had no recollection whatsoever of communicating any orders for the display of caution with regards to the customer deposits. His defence’s Counsellor Markh Cohen pressing him and probing and bunch of other pertinent evidence in what soon will be represent the sweeping arguments of the draw for his attention, At least involuntarily, Bankman-Fried classified FTX’s relationship to Alameda as ‘poor’, only attempting reasoning that ‘better systems’ could have been introduced had there been no mutual connection between them.
