Sam Bankman-Fried due again in court docket as choose weighs bail circumstances

By Luc Cohen

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Sam Bankman-Fried is due again in court docket on Wednesday, because the choose overseeing his fraud case weighs whether or not the founding father of the now-bankrupt FTX cryptocurrency alternate can stay free on his present bail circumstances forward of his Oct. 2 trial.

The U.S. Legal professional’s workplace in Manhattan requested U.S. District Decide Lewis Kaplan to bar Bankman-Fried from making public statements that would intrude with the case.

In what prosecutors final week stated amounted to witness tampering, Bankman-Fried gave a New York Occasions reporter private writings by Caroline Ellison, the previous chief govt of his crypto hedge fund, Alameda Analysis.

Ellison, additionally Bankman-Fried’s onetime romantic associate, has pleaded responsible and is anticipated to testify in opposition to him.

Bankman-Fried, who has pleaded not responsible to costs he stole billions of {dollars} in FTX buyer funds to plug losses at Alameda, consented to the gag order however requested that it additionally apply to prosecutors and potential witnesses, particularly present FTC Chief Government Officer John Ray.

Kaplan scheduled the two p.m. EDT (1800 GMT) listening to in Manhattan federal court docket partly to contemplate “the adequacy and continuation of the present bail circumstances.”

It isn’t the primary time the choose has questioned whether or not Bankman-Fried’s bail phrases are too free. The 31-year-old former billionaire has been largely confined to his dad and mom’ residence in Palo Alto, California, since his extradition in December from the Bahamas, the place he was arrested and the place FTX was based mostly.

In January, prosecutors proposed limiting Bankman-Fried’s web use after he tried to contact Ray and an FTX lawyer. In a February listening to, Kaplan questioned why he was “being requested to show (Bankman-Fried) free,” however stopped in need of jailing him and imposed limits on his communications.

The Occasions final Thursday printed a narrative citing excerpts of Ellison’s private Google (NASDAQ:) paperwork from earlier than FTX’s collapse through which she described being “sad and overwhelmed” along with her job and feeling “damage/rejected” from her breakup with Bankman-Fried.