Legal professionals astonished as SBF admits failures, apologizes 12 times in interview
Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried apologized or admitted failure at least 12 times during his appearance at the New York Times' DealBook Summit on Nov. 30.
In a wide-ranging video interview, Bankman-Fried was asked to answer a number of questions surrounding the downfall of the now-defunct exchange, with some even suggesting that some of his statements could be used to incriminate him in legal proceedings.
In a Nov. 30 Twitter post, crypto attorney Jeremy Hogan, Partner at Hogan & Hogan said that the “light cross-examination” of Bankman-Fried at the DealBook Summit has already returned “at least 3 incriminating statements so far.”
SBF is getting a light cross-examination at the NYT/Dealbook Summit and has made at least 3 incriminating statements so far.Why are his lawyers (or parents) letting him do this?? pic.twitter.com/Nd0poutAA0
Alan Rosca from the law firm Rosca Scarlato said it was “pretty astonishing that he’s in effect testifying at the DealBook summit. Hard to think of a precedent for this.”
Bankman-Fried’s first concession came while greeting interviewer Andrew Sorkin, when he said in reference to the collapse of FTX:
An apology came moments later when Sorkin confronted him with a letter written by an FTX customer who lost $2 million in life savings after the exchange collapsed.
“I'm deeply sorry about what happened,” said Bankman-Fried in response to the customer's story.
Later, when discussing the allegations that Alameda used FTX client funds to cover loans, Bankman-Fried said that while he “didn't know exactly what was going on” at Alameda,” he concedes it was still his duty as FTX CEO to “make sure I was doing diligence.”
“A lot of these are things that I've learned over the last month that I learned [...] I
Read more on cointelegraph.com
