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Sam Bankman-Fried denied having any role in the recently reported fund transfers, including Alameda.
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His lawyer argued that his client had nothing to do with it, but prosecutors said they were skeptical.
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A federal judge sided with prosecutors and denied him access to Alameda and FTX assets.
Following a recent report on Cointelegraph in December that some Alameda crypto assets were moved, Sam Bankman-Fried was blocked from accessing and making transfers involving Alameda and FTX assets.
US district judge Lewis Kaplan, who presided over Bankman-Fried’s trial Tuesday in which he pleaded not guilty to the founder of FTX and Alameda, granted prosecutors’ request to bar him from such proceedings.
Released under a $250 million bail contract and staying with his family in California, Bankman-Fried tweeted Friday that he was not involved in any of the transactions cited in the Cointelegraph report.
“I do not and cannot carry any of these funds; I no longer have access to them,” he wrote.
At Tuesday’s hearing, US assistant attorney Danielle Sassoon said the transfers now moved those funds out of government reach for asset confiscation purposes, although she was not sure who had accessed the Alameda accounts.
Sassoon said prosecutors had little reason to believe Bankman-Fried’s tweet and lied in previous tweets where he denied using FTX client funds and sought to move crypto assets to foreign regulators to avoid the consequences of FTX’s bankruptcy.
“We don’t put much stock into it,” he said.
Bankman-Fried’s attorney, Mark Cohen, was strongly opposed to the stipulation. He said Tuesday the transfers were made at the behest of a court in the Bahamas, where FTX has filed for bankruptcy in parallel with pending lawsuits in Delaware, and that Bankman-Fried was not involved.
Kaplan’s decision precludes Bankman-Fried from these proceedings, but allows her to reach an agreement with prosecutors about a possible different arrangement.
“It seems reasonable to me,” Kaplan said.
On Tuesday, Kaplan set October 2 as the hearing date, but Bankman-Fried can work with prosecutors to negotiate a plea deal before that. He faces eight charges, including wire fraud and conspiracy charges.
Read the original article on Business Insider