Sam Bankman-Fried Appeals Fraud Conviction Tied To FTX Implosion, Requests Contemporary Trial ⋆ ZyCrypto

After being discovered responsible of fraud and conspiracy in November 2023, the previous CEO of the now-defunct FTX digital asset change, Sam Bankman-Fried, has filed an attraction 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 beneath a brand new decide.

Claims Of Judicial Bias

Sam Bankman-Fried’s authorized crew has formally filed an attraction for his conviction on seven felony counts and his 25-year jail sentence tied to the downfall of his crypto change 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 attraction 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 line with the Friday submitting, FTX was by no means bancrupt and truly had billions of {dollars} to reimburse affected clients regardless of the liquidity disaster that triggered the collapse.

The attraction argues that the fallen crypto star was not given the prospect to current his facet of the story — that he truly did have the cash to compensate shoppers, 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 crew 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 info as an “arm of the prosecution.”

New Trial, New Decide

FTX was one of many main crypto exchanges that instantly collapsed in late 2022. The preliminary liquidity crunch in the end 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 crew indicated.