By Shubham Kalia and Gokul Pisharody
(Reuters) – U.S. prosecutors have charged FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried with witness tampering and requested a federal decide to concern an order barring the previous billionaire and different events from making public statements that might intrude with a good trial.
Prosecutors wrote to U.S. District Choose Lewis Kaplan on Thursday referring to a New York Occasions article titled “Contained in the Personal Writings of Caroline Ellison, Star Witness within the FTX Case.”
The article reported excerpts from Ellison’s private paperwork on Google (NASDAQ:) from earlier than the collapse of FTX during which she spoke of being “quite sad and overwhelmed” together with her job and feeling “harm/rejected” by her breakup with Bankman-Fried.
Ellison ran Bankman-Fried’s Alameda Analysis hedge fund and pleaded responsible to defrauding buyers and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. In December, Bankman-Fried mentioned he and Ellison had been in a relationship, however gave no additional particulars.
Prosecutors mentioned it was obvious that Bankman-Fried shared paperwork with The New York Occasions and that his legal professionals have since confirmed to the federal government that he met one of many authors of the article in individual and shared paperwork “that weren’t a part of the federal government’s discovery materials”.
Bankman-Fried’s spokesperson and attorneys didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark. Neither The New York Occasions nor Ellison’s attorneys responded to Reuters requests for remark.
Prosecutors argued that by sharing these paperwork, Bankman-Fried was trying to disparage Ellison’s credibility and that such conduct might disqualify witnesses from testifying and taint the jury panel.
“By selectively sharing sure non-public paperwork with The New York Occasions, the defendant is trying to discredit a witness, forged Ellison in a foul mild, and advance his protection by way of the press and out of doors the constraints of the courtroom and the principles of proof: that Ellison was a rejected lover who dedicated these crimes alone,” prosecutors wrote within the letter.
Earlier Thursday, FTX Buying and selling sued founder Bankman-Fried and different former executives of the cryptocurrency trade, searching for to get well greater than $1 billion they allegedly embezzled earlier than FTX went bankrupt.
