Eight major media companies including Bloomberg, The Financial Times and Reuters have demanded public disclosure of the two individuals responsible for guaranteeing FTX former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s $250 million bond.Â
In a Jan. 12 letter addressed to New York District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan, attorneys from Davis Wright Tremaine LLP â acting on behalf of the media giants â argued that âthe publicâs right to know Bankman-Fried’s guarantors outweighed their privacy and safety rights.â
Media organizations looking to persuade the judge to unseal the identities of Bankman-Fried’s guarantors include the Associated Press, Bloomberg, CNBC, Dow Jones, The Financial Times, Insider and the Washington Post.
In making their case, the mediaâs lawyers used case precedent from Ghislaine Maxwellâs Dec. 2020 case â where the bond guarantors’ names werenât revealed â to argue that Sam Bankman-Friedâs financial crimes were not as serious as Maxwellâs involvement in Jeffery Epsteinâs child sex traffic ring scandal:
“While Mr. Bankman-Fried is accused of serious financial crimes, a public association with him does not carry nearly the same stigma as with the Jeffrey Epstein child sex trafficking scandal.â
According to a Jan. 12 report from Reuters, Bankman-Friedâs lawyers previously argued that Bankman-Fried’s sureties should be kept under wraps as Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried â the parents and co-signers of Bankman-Friedâs $250 million bond â have received ongoing physical threats since FTX’s catastrophic collapse in early November.
Related: Sam Bankman-Fried: âI didnât steal funds, and I certainly didnât stash billions awayâ
If the guarantorâs names were revealed, there would be a âserious cause for concernâ for the safety and welfare of those two people, Bankman-Friedâs lawyers argued.
On Jan. 3, Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty against all eight criminal charges related to the shock collapse of his former cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which includes wire fraud and violations of campaign finance laws among other charges.