“Presumed Guilty”: Sam Bankman-Fried Appeals Fraud Conviction Tied To FTX Implosion, Requests Contemporary Trial – BitRss – Crypto World Information
After being discovered responsible of fraud and conspiracy in November 2023, the previous CEO of the now-defunct FTX digital asset alternate, Sam Bankman-Fried, has filed an enchantment and referred to as for a recent trial.
Bankman-Fried’s attorneys argue that the FTX co-founder by no means received a good trial as he was blocked from introducing sure proof. As well as, they declare Lewis Kaplan, the presiding decide within the case, was unfairly biased towards Bankman-Fried, and he ought to thus be tried once more below a brand new decide.
Claims Of Judicial Bias
Sam Bankman-Fried’s authorized staff has formally filed an enchantment for his conviction on seven felony counts and his 25-year jail sentence tied to the downfall of his crypto alternate FTX in November 2022.
In a Sept. 13 submitting in the USA Court docket of Appeals for the Second Circuit, SBF’s legal professionals, Alexandra A.E. Sapiro, Theodore Sampsell-Jones, and Jason A. Driscoll, filed a 102-page enchantment claiming that the ex-FTX boss was “presumed guilty — before he was even charged.”
“He was presumed guilty by the media,” the submitting notes. “He was presumed guilty by the FTX debtor estate and its lawyers. He was presumed guilty by federal prosecutors eager for quick headlines. And he was presumed guilty by the judge who presided over his trial.”
The attorneys claimed that Decide Kaplan was unfair to Bankman-Fried through the trial, making “biting comments undermining the defense” and “deriding” his testimony in entrance of the jury.
In response to the Friday submitting, FTX was by no means bancrupt and really had billions of {dollars} to reimburse affected prospects regardless of the liquidity disaster that triggered the collapse.
The enchantment argues that the fallen crypto star was not given the possibility to current his aspect of the story — that he really did have the cash to compensate purchasers, however with illiquid investments.
“Bankman-Fried had not lost or stolen all the money, and the investments he made were not risky or stupid. Most of them, like his $500 million investment in Anthropic and his investment in Solana, were prescient,” the authorized staff continued. “FTX faced a liquidity crisis, not a solvency crisis.”
Bankman-Fried ought to have been allowed to argue towards prosecutors, the legal professionals asserted.
“All this could have been proven at trial if the judge had allowed the defense evidence,” as per the submitting. “The prejudice arising from the error can be summed up simply: The prosecution was allowed to present a case that was objectively false, and the defense was not permitted to rebut it.”
The protection additionally alleged that counsel for the FTX chapter property labored with the US DOJ in a way that exceeded “cooperation,” offering data as an “arm of the prosecution.”
New Trial, New Decide
FTX was one of many main crypto exchanges that all of a sudden collapsed in late 2022. The preliminary liquidity crunch finally led to proof of extreme fraud and mismanagement.
Decide Kaplan sentenced Bankman-Fried to 25 years behind bars for his crimes. A number of of the highest associates of the 32-year-old former billionaire, together with his ex-girlfriend and former Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison, Nishad Singh, Gary Wang, and Ryan Salame, pleaded responsible to their legal costs and testified towards him throughout his trial, cooperating with authorities. Salame was sentenced to 90 months in jail in Might, whereas Ellison is scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 24, and has requested for no jail time.
Decide Kaplan evidently demonstrated his dislike for Bankman-Fried all through the trial, his legal professionals contended, accusing him of “putting a thumb on the scale to help the government.”
“Time and again, Decide Kaplan expressed a agency perception in Bankman-Fried’s guilt, the authorized staff indicated.
