Sam Bankman-Fried, founder and chief govt officer of FTX Cryptocurrency Derivatives Change, speaks throughout a Senate Agriculture, Diet and Forestry Committee listening to in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2022.
Sarah Silbiger/ | Bloomberg | Getty Photos
Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried is refusing to testify at a listening to this week about his firm’s implosion, the Senate Banking Committee stated Monday.
Attorneys for the crypto platform’s founder have additionally stated Bankman-Fried, who relies within the Bahamas, is not going to settle for service of a subpoena to compel his testimony earlier than the panel, senators stated.
Bankman-Fried is scheduled to seem at a Home Monetary Companies Committee listening to on Tuesday that can concentrate on his firm’s collapse.
In a joint assertion, Senate Banking Chair Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio and rating member Pat Toomey, R-Pa., stated they’ve “provided Sam Bankman-Fried two totally different dates for offering testimony earlier than the Senate Banking, Housing, and City Affairs Committee, and are keen to accommodate digital testimony.”
“He has declined in an unprecedented abdication of accountability,” they stated. “On condition that Bankman-Fried’s counsel has said they’re unwilling to simply accept service of a subpoena, we’ll proceed to work to have him seem earlier than the Committee. He owes the American individuals a proof,” they stated.
Earlier Monday, Bankman-Fried stated he’s “not at present” scheduled to testify on the listening to. In a Twitter Areas interview, he additionally famous that he is “open and keen” to have a dialog about showing earlier than the committee.
Brown and Toomey lately threatened in a letter to Bankman-Fried to subpoena him if he “selected to not seem” on the Wednesday listening to.
Bankman-Fried was known as to testify in entrance of the Senate committee after his crypto trade FTX crashed in a matter of days. Earlier than the corporate imploded, FTX reportedly transferred billions of {dollars} in consumer funds to Bankman-Fried’s buying and selling agency, Alameda Analysis.
Within the letter to Bankman-Fried requesting his testimony, Brown and Toomey wrote that “there are nonetheless vital unanswered questions on how consumer funds have been misappropriated, how shoppers have been blocked from withdrawing their very own cash, and the way you orchestrated a canopy up.”
