Several media organizations have filed a joint petition in the court of US District Judge Lewis A Kaplan in the Southern District of New York and asked to unseal the names of two non-parental sureties.
The release of Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) on a $250 million bail bond on December 22 underscored his importance. Despite the charges of defrauding billions of dollars of investors’ money, SBF was quickly extradited from the Bahamas and got bail in the United States.
Besides his father, SBF’s $250 million bail bond had two non-parental co-signators. As the bail amount is significant, there is great media interest in knowing who these two people are. In a ruling on January 3, 2023, the court granted his lawyers’ request to seal the names of the two non-parental guarantors on the grounds of privacy and safety to these individuals.
Challenging the sealing of SBF’s guarantors’ names, law firm Davis Wright Tremaine in its filing on January 12 said, “This firm writes on behalf of various news organizations, including The Associated Press, Bloomberg L.P., The Financial Times Ltd., CNBC LLC, Reuters News & Media Inc., Dow Jones & Co., Inc., publisher of The Wall Street Journal, Insider, Inc., and WP Company LLC, publisher of The Washington Post … respectfully request that the Court release the names and identifying information of Mr. Bankman-Fried’s bail sureties to the public…”
The New York Times and CoinDesk have made separate filings seeking to know the names of Sam Bankman-Fried’s guarantors. “Any purported interest in keeping these names secret or private is outweighed by the tremendous public interest in the identities of these individuals,” said the petition filed on behalf of CoinDesk.
