Bahamian Government Instructed Sam Bankman-Fried to Hack FTX

• On November 11, FTX filed for bankruptcy and Bankman-Fried resigned as CEO.
• The  co-founders and top executives of FTX, had borrowed $1.6 billion from Alameda.

According to court documents filed on Thursday, the bankrupt crypto exchange FTX claims the government of the Bahamas ordered unlawful access to the firm’s systems so that assets could be taken out after the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the U.S. 

“Unauthorized” FTX Transactions by the Bahamas

The complaint was contained in a document that refuted a lawsuit brought in a New York court by the Bahamian liquidators in charge of managing FTX’s assets. The liquidators had requested that the U.S. court transfer control of the proceedings to the Bahamas, where the crypto company had its headquarters, in its chapter 15 filing, which is used in bankruptcy cases requiring collaboration between the U.S. and foreign courts.

Nishad Singh and Ryan Salame, co-founders and top executives of FTX, had each borrowed $1.6 billion from Alameda, while Bankman-Fried had loaned $2.3 billion to an FTX subsidiary. The Bahamas Securities Commission announced late on Thursday that it had taken action on Nov. 12 to transfer all of FTX Digital Markets’ (FDM’s) digital assets to a digital wallet it owns. 

FTX responded on Thursday by requesting that any litigation relating to the business’s bankruptcy be heard in Delaware courts, as opposed to New York, as the company voluntarily filed for chapter 11 last week. In the bankruptcy petition, references are made to “recorded and authenticated messages” that former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and co-founder Gary Wang exchanged as part of an inquiry into a hack that happened the weekend after the bankruptcy filing.