When Sam Bankman-Fried is due to enter a plea next Tuesday, he plans to plead not guilty. At the same time, he has denied being behind the suspicious transactions made by Alameda Research addresses this week.
Sam Bankman-Fried to plead not guilty
With the long legal process surrounding the FTX case just beginning, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) plans to enter a not guilty plea in his defence against the charges he faces.
Indeed, next Tuesday at 2pm New York time, SBF is scheduled to be heard by Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan for his plea. It is at this hearing that SBF will deny the charges of fraud and deceit against his clients, as reported by Reuters, to whom SBF’s lawyers have not commented.
Of course, this is only one of the first steps before a verdict is reached and the former FTX CEO can reverse his decision. It should be remembered that he faces up to 115 years in prison on the whole case, although he could get away with up to ten years in similar cases.
SBF denies being behind Alameda Research’s mysterious transactions
This week, several on-chain analysts noted that addresses affiliated with Alamada Research had made curious moves to sell and mix $1.7 million of various tokens. While suspicions naturally turned to Sam Bankman-Fried, who was released on bail last week, he denied the speculation in full:
None of these are me. I’m not and couldn’t be moving any of those funds; I don’t have access to them anymore.https://t.co/5Gkin30Ny5
– SBF (@SBF_FTX) December 30, 2022
The latter also went on to argue that “it was likely that various branches of FTX” were behind the moves.
While SBF has proven in recent months that honesty is optional for him, it is difficult to draw conclusions from this. The fact is that the person behind these moves necessarily had access to the private key(s) behind the addresses in question. These movements can also be the work of several people in the case of multisig portfolios.
In any case, the justice system does not seem to be at the origin of these movements. And for good reason, our colleagues at Bloomberg reported that the prosecutors of the Southern District of New York were investigating the said movements. As for SBF, it would require government or court approval for any transaction over $1,000, except for its legal fees.
