Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, has asked a federal court to dismiss 10 of the 13 criminal charges filed against him by US prosecutors. His lawyers have argued that the charges, including wire fraud and conspiracy to commit bank fraud, were “dramatic” and turned “civil and regulatory issues into federal crimes.”
They also claimed that prosecutors did not state an offense for failure to allege a valid property right in some of the charges. Bankman-Fried is facing over 100 years in prison if convicted of all charges, media reports said.
FTX and its group of crypto companies filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November last year, and Bankman-Fried was later arrested in The Bahamas after US prosecutors formally filed criminal charges against him.
He was extradited to the US and released from jail after posting a $250m bond in a New York court. FTX has since managed to recover over $7.3 billion in cash and liquid crypto assets, according to an attorney for the company.
Bankman-Fried’s lawyers argued that FTX collapsed due to the so-called “crypto winter” of 2022, when the prices of several popular cryptocurrencies nosedived, while some others completely collapsed. However, the effort to revive FTX has drawn interest from Tribe Capital, a venture firm seeking to lead a $250 million fundraising campaign for the new platform.
At the time of writing, FTT, the native token of FTX, is trading at $1.24, almost flat over the past day, but still down by more than 97% compared to its all-time high of $84 recorded in September 2021.
