Sam Bankman-Fried of FTX will testify before the US House committee next week

FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried is scheduled to testify before a U.S. House committee on Tuesday, the cryptocurrency exchange founder and congressional panel said Friday, as regulators investigate his role in the aftermath. of its collapse.

House Financial Services Committee Chair Maxine Waters told Reuters on Thursday she was prepared to subpoena Bankman-Fried if he did not agree to appear before the panel, which is holding a hearing in as part of its investigation of FTX.

In a statement late Friday, the panel said it will hear from new FTX CEO John Ray and FTX founder and former CEO Bankman-Fried on Tuesday.

“I still don’t have access to a lot of my data – work or personal. So there’s a limit to what I can say, and I won’t be as helpful as I would like,” Bankman said. Fried. Friday on Twitter.

“But as the committee still thinks it would be useful, I am ready to testify on the 13th,” he added.

The hybrid hearing is scheduled for Tuesday at 10 a.m. ET (8:30 p.m. IST), the committee said.

In recent weeks, U.S. authorities have sought information from investors and potential investors in FTX, two sources familiar with the requests told Reuters. Prosecutors and regulators have not charged Bankman-Fried with any crime.

U.S. Justice Department officials met with FTX’s court-appointed monitors this week to examine whether hundreds of millions of dollars were improperly transferred to the Bahamas, where FTX is based, around the same time as the crypto exchange has filed for bankruptcy in Delaware, Bloomberg reported late Friday.

FTX and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment on the report.

Fighting Crypto Pioneers

FTX filed for bankruptcy last month and Bankman-Fried resigned as chief executive, after traders withdrew $6 billion (about Rs 50,000 crore) from the platform in three days and the rival exchange Binance has abandoned a bailout deal.

Reuters last month detailed the bitter rivalry between Bankman-Fried and Binance chief executive Changpeng Zhao, who in the months before FTX fell had fought over market share.

Public tension between the two erupted again on Friday after a series of tweets from Zhao.

Zhao said that after Binance, an early investor in FTX, sought to exit its stake more than a year and a half ago, Bankman-Fried made “offensive tirades” against members of the Binance team.

Binance sold its stake in the company back to FTX last year.

In response, Bankman-Fried wrote, “We have been engaging in conversations around your takeover, and we decided to do this because it was important to our business.”

“You have threatened to walk away at the last minute if we don’t inject around another $75 million (about Rs 600 crore),” he added. “You weren’t even allowed to exit as an investor unless we chose to buy you out – a lot of the tokens/equity were still locked.”

“It’s not important now. You also can’t force us to sell if we don’t want to,” Zhao replied.

“It was never a competition or a fight. No one won.”

© Thomson Reuters 2022

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