The United States Department of Justice (DoJ) filed a complaint against the founder of FTX Sam Bankman-fried (SBF), accusing him of leaking the private documents of Caroline Ellison, who was once his business ally and romantic partner.
In a new complaint archived On July 20, the Justice Department charged Bankman-Fried with attempting to interfere with a fair trial by publicly discrediting Ellison, who became a government witness in the case of SBF at the end of 2022.
SBF sought to publicly discredit a government witness by sharing his personal writings with a reporter so that those private documents would appear in an article. published by The New York Times on July 20, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams argued in the complaint.
In her journal, Ellison described feeling overwhelmed by her work at Alameda Research, along with other things like the pain of her breakup with SBF and her career insecurities.
Although the article does not indicate who provided the documents to the NYT, "it is clear" that Bankman-Fried shared the documents, Williams said. He wrote:
โWhen the government learned this week that this article was going to be published, defense counsel confirmed that the defendant had met with one of the authors of the article in person and shared with him documents that were not part of the discovery material of the article. government".
The attorney went on to say that, based on excerpts from the article, the documents "do not appear to be among the discovery materials in the case, but likely came from the defendant's personal Google Drive account."
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Williams then wrote that US federal rules of civil procedure prohibit attorneys and their agents from disclosing nonpublic information that could interfere with a fair trial. As such, the government requests that the court enter an order, pursuant to Local Rule 23.1, which prohibits โextrajudicial statements by parties and witnessesโ that are likely to interfere with the right to a fair trial by an impartial jury. Williams added:
"Having the story appear in a reputable newspaper with worldwide readership without identifying the defendant as the source lends a misleading patina of legitimacy to an otherwise open defense, compounding the risk of contaminating potential jurors."
Cointelegraph contacted defense attorneys from the Department of Justice and SBF, but did not receive an immediate response. This article will be updated pending new information.
Once a major global cryptocurrency exchange, FTX collapsed in mid-November 2022 in an event probably triggered by the company FTT token liquidity crisis. Some industry watchers also blamed the crash on the massive bear market of 2022, as well as deeper issues related to the link between FTX and Alameda.
Subsequently, after the implosion of the SBF crypto empire, as many as seven lawsuits were filed against him in early December 2022. The former CEO of FTX must in court on October 2 on multiple charges, including fraud, claims of illegal political donations, and bribery to the Chinese government.
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