Sam Bankman-Fried has been on trial on costs of fraud and cash laundering for simply over 4 weeks, and the case appears prefer it’s lastly drawing to an in depth. The prosecution started its closing statements on Wednesday; it was the protection’s flip after lunch.
Assistant U.S. lawyer Nicolas Roos stood in entrance of jurors from 10 a.m. ET till the court docket broke for lunch round 1 p.m. reiterating the prosecution’s case: Bankman-Fried lied, made false guarantees and is answerable for billions of {dollars} misplaced for hundreds of traders on FTX. And on prime of that, that Bankman-Fried had many alternatives to return clear, however didn’t.
At one particularly dramatic second, Roos pointed at the defendant and stated, “Who is responsible? This man: Samuel Bankman-Fried.” The former CEO of FTX did not look again, however he tilted his head barely.
Meanwhile, Mark Cohen, Bankman-Fried’s lead lawyer, stated the authorities is making a Hallmark movie-like case towards Bankman-Fried and that he made “bad business judgments.”
“The government has tried to paint Sam into some sort of villain, some sort of monster,” Cohen stated, utilizing a comfortable voice. He talked about that the prosecution has introduced up his appears, the $30 million Bahamas residence through which he lived with different execs, movie star connections and his intercourse life. The prosecution did this, Cohen stated, “to make him into someone you dislike … rather than make the case.”
His look, romantic relationships or being the “worst dressed CEO” don’t have anything to do with whether or not he’s responsible, Cohen stated. “Every movie needs a villain … they wrote him in as [one].”
The prosecutor emphasised the way it was fallacious of FTX to make use of prospects’ funds with out their data or approval. “It was a universal view: Customer funds belong to customers and can’t be used,” Roos stated, including that even FTX’s phrases of service acknowledged that customers’ deposits belonged to customers.
According to the proof, there was a “huge difference between what FTX said it had for customers versus what it actually had” and the way billions of {dollars} had been lacking, Roos stated. “This is not about complicated crypto [terms]. It’s about deception. It’s about lies. It’s about stealing; greed.”