By Luc Cohen
NEW YORK (Reuters) -Sam Bankman-Fried, the indicted founding father of the bankrupt FTX cryptocurrency alternate, on Tuesday stated he by no means sought to intimidate witnesses at his scheduled October fraud trial, and there’s no motive to jail him.
In a letter to U.S. District Decide Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan, Bankman-Fried stated prosecutors mischaracterized his intentions in giving a New York Occasions reporter the writings of former romantic associate Caroline Ellison, who is predicted to testify towards him.
“Mr. Bankman-Fried’s contact with the New York Occasions reporter was not an try to intimidate Ms. Ellison or taint the jury pool,” his lawyer, Mark Cohen, wrote within the letter. “It was a correct train of his rights to make honest touch upon an article already in progress.”Bankman-Fried, 31, has pleaded not responsible to stealing billions of {dollars} in FTX buyer funds to plug losses at his hedge fund Alameda Analysis, the place Ellison was chief government.
He has been largely confined to his mother and father’ Palo Alto, California dwelling on $250 million bond since his December 2022 arrest.
Ellison is one in every of three former members of Bankman-Fried’s interior circle who pleaded responsible to fraud prices and agreed to cooperate with the U.S. Lawyer’s workplace in Manhattan.
Kaplan barred Bankman-Fried from talking concerning the case and requested either side to submit written arguments about doable jail.
In an affidavit submitted by the protection, Laurence Tribe, a Harvard College constitutional regulation professor, stated Bankman-Fried had a proper to “keep away from projecting a false picture of somebody who’s media-shy or, worse, somebody whose consciousness of guilt makes him shun the media.”
Bankman-Fried’s legal professionals additionally argued that restricted web entry on the Metropolitan Detention Heart in Brooklyn, the place he can be held, would depart him unable to arrange for trial.
Prosecutors could reply to Bankman-Fried’s letter by Thursday. It isn’t recognized when Kaplan will rule.
