Sam Bankman-Fried seeks to access FTX funds
Sam Bankman-Fried's legal team is seeking to remove a bail condition that prevented him from accessing FTX's funds, according to court filings from Jan. 28.
A letter from Bankman-Fried's lawyer, Mark Cohen, to United States District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan stated that Bankman-Fried should have access to assets held by FTX, claiming the client was not involved in previous unauthorized transactions.
FTX and FTX US have sought over $659 million in unauthorized transfers amid the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange in November 2022, according to Nansen data reported by Cointelegraph. Bankman-Fried denied any involvement in the transactions.
As per the letter sent to Judge Kaplan, Bankman-Fried was “prohibited from accessing or transferring any FTX or Alameda assets or cryptocurrency, including assets or cryptocurrency purchased with funds from FTX or Alameda”, as requested by U.S. authorities at the first court hearing on Jan. 3. At the time, prosecutors acknowledged that there was no evidence that Mr. Bankman-Fried had transferred funds and noted that a federal probe was underway.
Related: Companies and investors may need to return billions in funds paid by FTX
"Nearly three weeks have passed since the initial pretrial conference and we assume that the Government’s investigation has confirmed what Mr. Bankman-Fried has said all along; namely, that he did not access and transfer these assets," notes the letter, stating that the defense notified authorities "as soon as we became aware of the transfers to provide notification."
Furthermore, the lawyers argued:
In addition, the letter addresses a request from Jan. 27 by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) prohibiting Bankman-Fried from communicating with “current or former
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