Looking into a Can Of Worms Called FTX

The receiver in the bankruptcy of FTX, John Ray III, was once in charge of winding up the energy and commodities giant Enron. But his “first affidavit” in the new case states that he has “never seen such a complete failure of corporate controls” in 35 years in his profession. What has so far emerged is an incredible tangle of financial frauds, theft and political corruption. Apparently, the FTX cryptocurrency exchange had been set up with the clear purpose of siphoning money into pro-war political campaigns, both Democratic and Republican.

While such financing was no secret (FTX was the second largest money-giver to the Democratic Party after George Soros, it is hard not to believe that an active role was also played by the parents of the exchange’s CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried. His mother Barbara Fried, a law professor at Stanford University, has a shadowy Super PAC called “Mind the Gap,” which has anonymously channeled millions of dollars to Democratic Party candidates, primarily from secretive Silicon Valley investors; his father Joseph Bankman, a professor of Law and Public Policy, was apparently a constant adviser to his son if not his consigliere, and was the one who ordered Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX to file for bankruptcy.

There is apparently evidence that Bankman-Fried’s company Alameda stole money from FTX clients to operate. Now another allegation has surfaced: that money collected to help Ukraine was also siphoned back into political campaigns. That allegation was raised by Congressman Paul Gosar, who said that FTX “may have received millions” of U.S. taxpayer money sent to Ukraine that “may have been laundered and sent as an ‘investment’ in FTX, which then donated the money to the Democrats.”

Indeed, last March, FTX launched an online portal for cryptocurrency donations for Ukraine, which in a matter of few weeks claimed to have collected $60 million in cryptocurrencies, which would be converted into money and used to deliver weapons and military equipment to the Ukrainian military. However, in the seven months thereafter, no significant amount of money was donated to the cause. This is quite difficult to believe, especially in light of the fact that billions of dollars which Bankman-Fried stole from FTX clients through Alameda seem to have disappeared.

Was FTX money used to finance political campaigns? Was the money raised for Ukraine used to finance those campaigns as well? Or have billions of dollars been used to finance activities that the U.S. government prefers to keep secret? And how much went to personally enrich Bankman-Fried and his team?