The United States Senate has no objection to the adoption of a non-legally binding resolution making it clear that Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the FTX, should not receive a presidential pardon or commutation of his sentence. This statement followed his request for pardon and took place in the context of a previous pardon by Trump of well-known individuals in the field of encryption.
Two-party senators.
This resolution was led by Senator Cynthia Lummis, Republican Party of Wyoming, and Senator Ruben Gallego, Democratic Party of Arizona. They are the main Republican and Democratic members of the Digital Assets Subcommittee of the Senate Banking Commission.
The resolution was adopted by the Senate “with no objection”. This means that no senator objected during the voting process.
First released in 2044.
Both members of Parliament have publicly opposed pardons in advance of the resolution. Lummis stated that Bankman-Fried had been tried in court; Gallego had directly requested his continued detention.
Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted by a jury in November 2023 on seven counts related to the collapse of FTX. The prosecution has referred to this case as one of the largest financial fraud cases in the history of the United States, claiming that United States clients lost more than $8 billion.
Under the current prison terms, he would not be eligible for release until about 2044. Trump said in January this year that there were no plans to pardon Bankman-Fried. Before that, however, he had pardoned the founders of Bianan Zhao Chang Peng, the founder of the Silk Road Ross Ulbricht and other white-collar criminals.
FTX mixed with Alameda funds
Bankman-Fried controls both FTX and Alameda Research. The former is an encrypted exchange, which is responsible for the custody of the customer ' s funds, while the latter is its own trading company. The prosecution alleges that he transferred billions of dollars of FTX customer deposits to Alameda for trading, investment, political donations and real estate purchases in the Bahamas.
It was also reported that the FTX software system had granted Alameda special treatment so that it did not need to make up for losses in a timely manner as other traders did. This structure was quickly out of control in November 2022.
CoinDesk obtained Alameda ' s balance sheet at the time and found that the company ' s large number of assets on its books consisted of FTT, which was a token issued by FTX itself. Subsequently, after a rapid fall in the prices of the FTTs, which it indicated it would sell, the users began to focus on the withdrawal of funds, which resulted in FTX being unable to pay and applying for bankruptcy on November 11, 2022.