Free Republic

Sam Bankman-Fried appeared Tuesday at a hearing in the Bahamas with his parents in attendance, according to multiple reports, including from The New York Times and the cryptocurrency site CoinDesk. At the hearing, which largely focused on whether Bankman-Fried would be released on bail, the former FTX CEO indicated that he was not waiving his right to challenge his extradition to the US, the CoinDesk report said. The site, which was reporting live from Nassau in the Bahamas, broke the news in November of the financial links between FTX and Bankman-Fried's trading firm, Alameda Research. During the proceedings, Bankman-Fried's mother,...

When alleged crypto-fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried finished testifying at a congressional hearing last December, Democrat Maxine Waters, chair of the House Financial Services Committee, blew him a kiss as he walked by. And why not, since the shambolic 30-year-old former multibillionaire is acknowledged to be the second-biggest donor to the Democrats, after George Soros. He helped bankroll Joe Biden into the White House and had promised to donate $1 billion to help the party win the 2024 presidential election. There are those, such as Elon Musk, who allege that SBF, as he is called, already has funneled $1 billion of stolen...

The hatred of the accomplished Musk and the worship of the hollow man Bankman-Fried are sad commentaries on how liberalism has descended into progressivism and ultimately into Stalinism. Before the midterm November elections, Sam Bankman-Fried was a left-wing billionaire heartthrob. He properly grew up on the Stanford campus, where his parents were well-known left-wing activist law professors. He went to a tony prep school and on to MIT. Bankman-Fried mocked society’s bourgeois capitalist conventions by dressing and looking like a slob in cut-offs and T-shirts. Indeed, he bested the nose-ring, Charles Manson-esque appearance of former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. He...

As Joe Bankman and Barbara Fried sat in a Bahamian courtroom Tuesday, the popular Stanford law professors had to be worried about more than whether their FTX founder son, Sam Bankman-Fried, will go to prison for orchestrating what a federal prosecutor described as “one of the biggest financial frauds in American history.” The couple also have to be concerned about their own legal jeopardy, a criminal law expert said, given reports that they were involved, at some level, in their son’s efforts to build his allegedly fraudulent cryptocurrency exchange into a $32 billion business. They face scrutiny on multiple fronts...

Ayn Rand referred to the business and political masters (and clueless destroyers) of the economy as ‘looters.’ ... One guesses that Ayn Rand, author of the 1957 dystopian novel “Atlas Shrugged,” wouldn’t be surprised by our government-business partnerships and moral crusades. Sam Bankman-Fried would fit perfectly as a character in an “Atlas Shrugged” sequel. In Rand’s novel, a do-good industrialist collaborating with political managers of the economy opines, “It’s generally conceded that the free economy is now on trial. Unless it proves its social value and assumes its social responsibilities, the people won’t stand for it. If it doesn’t develop...

Having been arrested the previous day in the Bahamas, the star of the show, Sam Bankman-Fried, was unable to attend Tuesday’s House Financial Services Committee hearing on the stunning collapse of FTX. But as they say, the show, presided over by the petulant and uber entitled committee chair, Rep. Maxine Waters, went on. The congresswoman from California has grown accustomed to having her own way in the Democratic-controlled Congress and was clearly not pleased when Texas Rep. Lance Gooden, a Republican, challenged her authority. Waters tried to end the hearing before Gooden was allowed to question the witness, current FTX...

VIDEOScam the Scam is about to enter the Ninth Circle of Hell aka the notoriously brutal Fox Hill Prison in the Bahamas. After living life in a very comfy protective bubble of pampered privilege poor Sam is in for a big shock. If he so much as mentions "effective altruism" in that prison, you just know where the prisoners will shove that altruism as you can see in a few scenes in this video of what awaits him at his new abode. A hellhole where worrying about fulfilling his vegan diet will be the LEAST of his concerns.It's almost as...

The European Commission is seeking feedback on whether the 27-country bloc needs to loosen state aid rules to allow governments to support companies affected by the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act, with plans for a European fund in future. The $430 billion act, which grants consumers tax credits for U.S.-produced electric vehicles (EV) and other green products, has triggered fears it could disadvantage European Union companies and tempt businesses to relocate to the United States. […] The EU executive will ask countries if looser state aid rules known as the temporary crisis framework, adopted in March for businesses hit by the...

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - After all-night negotiations, the European Union struck a political deal on Tuesday to impose a carbon dioxide emissions tariff on imports of polluting goods such as steel and cement, a world-first scheme aiming to support European industries as they decarbonise. Negotiators from EU countries and the European Parliament reached a deal at around 5am in Brussels, on the law to impose CO2 emissions costs on imports of iron and steel, cement, fertilisers, aluminium and electricity. Companies importing those goods into the EU will be required to buy certificates to cover their embedded CO2 emissions. The scheme is...

Paris (AFP) – French prosecutors said Wednesday that they had searched the headquarters of President Emmanuel Macron's Renaissance party in their investigation into the use of consulting firms by the government since 2017. The Paris offices of US consulting giant McKinsey were also searched on Tuesday, the National Financial Prosecutors' Office said, confirming a report in Le Parisien newspaper. The use of consultants by Macron's governments came under the spotlight in March after a French Senate inquiry concluded that public spending on them had more than doubled from 2018 to 2021, during Macron's first term. "It's normal for the judiciary...

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried and Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison have each retained high-powered criminal defense attorneys specializing in white-collar crimes amid the ongoing law enforcement probes into the collapse of their crypto empire. The task of preventing Bankman-Fried from spending the rest of his life in prison if found guilty of the crimes he stands accused of falls to Mark Cohen, of Cohen & Gresser law firm. Cohen, a former federal prosecutor, has represented a variety of clients including financial firms, hedge funds, executives, energy companies, and others facing federal charges. Notably, Cohen represented Jeffrey Epstein's confidante Ghislaine Maxwell...

Sam Bankman-Fried, founder and former CEO of now-defunct crypto-lending firm FTX, denied that he was in a secret chat group called "Wirefraud," hours before his arrest in the Bahamas on Monday. Bankman-Fried responded to a tweet accusing him of being in the chat group saying: "If this is true then I wasn't a member of that inner circle. (I'm quite sure it's just false; I have never heard of such a group.)" The apparent chat group, based on encrypted messaging platform Signal, included members of FTX's inner circle, the Australian Financial Review reported first. Alongside Bankman-Fried, FTX's co-founder Gary Wang,...

A US State Department study on the prison found that it was infested with rats and maggots while due to low staff numbers, the inmates were only allowed out of their cells for 30 minutes a week. One section of the study reads: 'Many cells also lacked running water, and in those cells, inmates removed human waste by bucket.'It continued: 'Sanitation was a general problem, with cells infested with rats, maggots and insects. Ventilation was also a general problem. Prisoners in maximum security had access to sanitary facilities only one hour a day and used slop buckets as toilets.'Another section...

The war on cash has just gone to an entirely new level. When I heard that the European Union was planning to completely ban all cash transactions above 10,000 euros, I had a hard time believing it. There are so many wild rumors flying around on the Internet these days, and so I wasn’t going to write about this unless I could confirm it. Unfortunately, this particular rumor is quite real. Under the pretext of fighting “money laundering and terrorist financing”, the European Union will be entirely outlawing all cash payments greater than 10,000 euros. The following comes from the...

Despite Sam Bankman-Fried being a no-show — he’s busy fighting extradition to the United States after being criminally charged with fraud — there still were some fireworks at today’s FTX hearing in front of the House Financial Services Committee. You’re pretty much guaranteed a fun sound bite — or whacky video clip — when Maxine Waters, outgoing chair of the committee, is involved and today was no different. Current FTX CEO, John Ray, who’s trying to clean up the mess left behind by SBF, did appear before the committee today and testified that “FTX commingled customer funds with the FTX...

The sad truth is that the ‘campaign contributions’ (bribe money) are likely far in excess of tens of millions… Regardless, prosecutors are claiming that FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried made millions in ‘illegal’ campaign contributions—this is aside from the money transparently given mostly to Democrats. SBF gave money to both sides of the political establishment; however, reports indicate that he was a Democrat mega-donor. His recent arrest has prompted many to wonder if the establishment is attempting to keep him from Congressional questioning via testimony he agreed to give.

WASHINGTON — White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre wouldn’t say Tuesday whether President Biden would ask his aides to return 2020 campaign contributions from accused cryptocurrency con man Sam Bankman-Fried, whom the Justice Department has charged with swindling investors out of at least $1.8 billion. “The president received campaign donations [from Bankman-Fried]. Will the president return that donation? Does he call on all politicians … to return those funds?” asked Associated Press reporter Zeke Miller. “So look, I’m covered here by the Hatch Act — [I’m] limited on what I can say and anything that’s connected to political contributions from...

A Bahamian judge is allowing Sam Bankman-Fried's parents to leave court in the middle of his arraignment hearing to retrieve anti-depressants, Adderall and Zyrtec. Bankman-Fried is accused of one of the 'biggest financial frauds in American history' - defrauding investors out of $1.8billion by convincing them his trading platform FTX was safe to use. He is begging for mercy - asking for $250,000 cash bond - and claiming he can't be thrown in jail because he is depressed and follows a vegan diet. Prosecutors in the Bahamas are begging a judge not to grant him bail, insisting he is a...

How can she conduct an impartial investigation of his Ponzi scheme? ... Sam Bankman-Fried, according to Victor Davis Hanson, “may have robbed perhaps a million investors, and along with them hundreds of large institutional investors.” He “protected from federal securities regulators, had drained off, lost, hidden, or spent billions of dollars of other people’s money.” Now his dear friend Maxine Waters (D-Incitement), who was caught on video blowing him a kiss in December 2021, will be leading an investigation into his sleazy FTX Ponzi scheme as Chair of the House Financial Services Committee. Waters initially stepped on a rake when...

Caroline Ellison hired Stephanie Avakian and law firm WilmerHale to represent her in the FTX investigation, per Bloomberg. Avakian was a top regulator at the SEC, where she increased oversight of cryptocurrency. She also led major cases against companies including Tesla, Theranos, Facebook, and Wells Fargo, among others.