Disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried has claimed that the company’s new CEO, John Rainey, made “false” statements in court filings during the company’s contentious bankruptcy proceedings.
Ray, tasked with guiding FTX through intense legal and regulatory scrutiny, argued in bankruptcy court last month that there were no corporate controls or clear books tracking FTX’s finances before its collapse.
Bankman-Fried fired back in a two-hour podcast interview — the latest stop on an ongoing media apology tour in which the 30-year-old tried to distance himself from the scandal even as customers and investors still owe him billions of dollars.
“There were a lot of statements that were made that I know to be false, that were included in the legal documents,” Bankman-Fried said during questioning on “The Block” on Monday. “I don’t know if they lied on purpose or if it was just an honest mistake because they didn’t consult with people who knew where those records were.”
“There have been cases where XYZ is said to be unavailable and I’m staring at a copy of XYZ,” Bankman-Fried added. “None of my emails have been answered.”
Bankman-Fried resigned as CEO of FTX on November 11, the same day the company filed for bankruptcy. Ray and other FTX employees were highly critical of previous management by Bankman-Fried and his associates in the days before the company’s collapse.
In testimony filed Nov. 17, Ray, a restructuring expert and veteran of the infamous Enron bankruptcy, described the accounting practices at FTX as the worst he had ever encountered in his career.
“Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate control and a complete lack of reliable financial information,” Ray said in the filing.
“From compromised systems integrity and flawed regulatory oversight overseas, to the concentration of oversight in the hands of a very small group of inexperienced, unsophisticated and potentially compromised individuals, this is unprecedented,” it added. Ray.
Various media coverage of the FTX bankruptcy pushed back against Bankman-Fried Ray’s characterization, which alternated between apologetic and condescending tones. He also accused the new leaders of FTX of refusing to talk to him.
“I challenge the claim that financial controls are zero,” Bankman-Fried said. “I absolutely agree that there are places where there is very poor oversight and that those places are very important and that’s very bad.”
“I think if you try to take over a company and refuse to talk to anyone involved in running that company, it’s very difficult to know where the relevant information is going to be in a short amount of time,” he said. added.
Bankman-Fried has drawn comparisons to late Ponzi scheme master Bernie Madoff in recent days as FTX’s new executives and investigators probe what happened at the company.
In a recent interview, Bankman-Fried had “miscounted” $8 billion in FTX’s balance sheet before it exploded, he said.
Much of the scrutiny has focused on a Reuters report that Bankman-Fried secretly transferred $10 billion in client FTX funds to cover losses at sister crypto trading firm Alameda Research, which it owns.
FTX’s new lawyers also accused Bankman-Fried of running the company as if it were his personal estate and overseeing huge expenditures, including $300 million for luxury real estate in the Bahamas.
.