Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced founding father of cryptocurrency trade FTX, is making ready to argue that he relied on the recommendation of Silicon Valley legislation agency Fenwick & West in his protection in opposition to fraud fees.
On Tuesday, his attorneys requested that prosecutors flip over paperwork that had been supplied to the federal government by the California-based agency between 2017 and 2022, in accordance with a report by Bloomberg.
Bankman-Fried’s protection crew reportedly claimed the authorized recommendation by Fenwick & West is “materials to making ready a protection.”
If the federal government doesn’t adjust to the request, the attorneys are in search of permission to subpoena the agency.
The authorized recommendation Fenwick & West supplied is alleged to incorporate using encrypted messaging apps, multimillion-dollar loans to FTX executives, and the trade’s compliance with US banking rules, all of that are key parts of the fees in opposition to Bankman-Fried.
Bankman-Fried is accused of directing a yearslong fraud during which he allegedly used billions of {dollars} in FTX buyer funds for dangerous investments, private bills, and political donations.
Nevertheless, a so-called advice-of-counsel protection might be used to rebut options that Bankman-Fried meant to interrupt the legislation.
“In different phrases, the defendant’s argument is ‘my attorneys advised me it was authorized, and I believed it was authorized,’” New York College legislation Professor Stephen Gillers stated.
SBF’s Relationship With Fenwick & West Proceed to Deteriorate
Bankman-Fried’s request for paperwork has positioned additional scrutiny on the connection between FTX and Fenwick & West.
The agency represented Alameda Analysis, FTX’s hedge fund affiliate and the conduit for a lot of Bankman-Fried’s fraud, in 2017 and have become FTX’s essential exterior counsel after its founding in 2019.
Fenwick & West has been despatched subpoenas by legislation enforcement and accused by buyers in a category motion lawsuit of aiding Bankman-Fried’s fraud.
A few of the materials requested by Bankman-Fried’s attorneys are associated to alleged lies to Silvergate Bank so as to have the ability to open an account in 2020 and obtain buyer deposits for FTX’s worldwide trade.
The financial institution had stated he could not open such an account if FTX wasn’t licensed as a cash providers enterprise within the US.
Whereas the trade’s US platform was registered as such in 2020, the legislation agency reportedly suggested Bankman-Fried on the time that its worldwide division did not must register within the US because it did not settle for US prospects.
Prosecutors allege that Bankman-Fried included a brand new firm, North Dimension, to get round Silvergate’s situations and filed an utility to the financial institution with false data.
Nevertheless, Bankman-Fried has claimed that Fenwick & West supplied “real-time recommendation” through the opening of the North Dimension account.
As reported, the disgraced crypto boss has asked a New York federal choose to dismiss many of the prison fees introduced in opposition to him by federal prosecutors.
In a submitting with the Southern District of New York federal courtroom earlier this week, attorneys of Bankman-Fried argued that a number of of the fees in opposition to him had been “dramatic” and turned “civil and regulatory points into federal crimes.”
