As if to further advertise the strength of its claims at trial, the government has also gone out of its way to highlight that the sources for many of its allegations are Bankman-Fried’s own associates and co-conspirators, known or believed to be prosecution witnesses. Prominent among them is Caroline Ellison, whom Bankman-Fried installed as a co-CEO of Alameda, and who helped to misappropriate deposits and give false and misleading information to Alameda creditors.
The second indictment even summarizes a discussion Bankman-Fried supposedly had with an FTX “in-house attorney” regarding a bogus explanation concocted for Alameda’s astronomical borrowings. Even though the attorney allegedly dismissed the explanation as incorrect, Bankman-Fried went on to embrace it publicly. Reading this conversation in the pages of the indictment may have been calculated to send a chill up the defense’s spine.
At trial, Bankman-Fried and his attorneys will have an opportunity to challenge the government’s apparently extensive proof. The new indictments are meant in part to dissuade them from doing so, and they could well succeed.
Source: The deepening predicament of Samuel Bankman-Fried | Reuters
