The Bahamas government reportedly worked with former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried to issue a new cryptocurrency controlled by local officials.
Following FTX’s collapse in November, Bahamian government officials reportedly asked Bankman-Fried to mint “hundreds of millions of dollars” worth of new digital assets, FTX’s lawyers claimed in a court filing, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. December 12th. The authorities have also reportedly asked the ex-CEO of FTX to transfer the new tokens to the control of island officials.
The report also suggests that Bahamian officials tried to help Bankman-Fried regain access to key computer systems of the now-defunct FTX trading platform. According to US lawyers, Bahamian officials were “responsible for directing unauthorized access” to FTX’s systems to gain control of digital assets under US court supervision.
John J. Ray III, FTX’s new CEO and restructuring expert, allegedly witnessed someone minting new coins as he and his team tried to gain control of FTX’s computer systems, the report states.
The lawyers’ claims further aggravate the conflict between executives tasked with restructuring FTX in the United States and officials in the Bahamas.. According to US lawyers, the Bahamian liquidators asked a US judge for access to FTX data controlled by their US counterparts, including business data, email logs and other information.
“This is a live and dynamic access request that would be provided immediately to the Bahamas government and Messrs.,” the lawyers reportedly wrote in a court filing on Tuesday.
To support their allegations of alleged cooperation between the Bahamian authorities and SBF, the US lawyers mentioned that SBF opened withdrawals for all Bahamian clients. On November 10, jJust a day before FTX filed for bankruptcy, the company said it had begun facilitating the withdrawal of funds from the Bahamas, citing compliance with local regulations. As a consequence, millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency left the exchange.
While the new report brings further allegations of close ties between FTX and Bahamian government officials, other reports also suggest that SBF also had connections to the US government. According to some reports, SBF spent about $40 million supporting Democrats during the 2021-2022 political cycle. Tesla CEO Elon Musk speculated that the amount SBF actually donated to Democratic candidates was more than $1 billion.
The news comes shortly after SBF expressed interest in forming a new project to repay up to $50 billion to FTX creditors. Subsequently, the founder of FTX was arrested in the Bahamas on December 12.
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