The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was “asleep at the wheel” regarding how FTX Group and its subsidiaries met corporate governance and financial requirements, said representative Pete Sessions in the December 17 Saturday Report.
“We have to look at what the SEC was doing,” the Texas congressman said, adding that “the commission was asleep at the wheel because of these billions of dollars that we now find out about a year later.”
On December 13, the SEC filed charges against Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of FTX, alleging that Bankman-Fried violated the anti-fraud provisions of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. In the complaint, the SEC seeks an injunction prohibiting Bankman-Fried from engaging in issuing, buying, offering, or selling securities except for its own account.
SEC Chairman Gary Gensler said Bankman-Fried “built a house of cards on a foundation of deception while telling investors it was one of the safest companies in the crypto space.” The charges were filed one day after his arrest by Bahamian authorities at the request of the US government.
Sessions also noted that a year ago, Bankman-Fried testified at a congressional committee hearing, where he was asked about the need for regulatory oversight for cryptocurrency. Bankman-Fried responded: “It’s just a matter of transparency,” according to Sessions.
The congressman also noted that Bankman-Fried had “full access to members of the United States Congress and Senate.”
Session’s comments follow those of Senator Tom Emmer, who criticized Gensler for his flawed “cryptocurrency data-gathering efforts,” calling on him to appear before Congress to answer for his “regulatory failures.”
Emmer also outlined that Gensler has not appeared before the House Financial Services Committee since October 2021, leaving cryptocurrency media to fill the void of the SEC’s investigative failures.
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