A substantial amount of FTX’s assets are either missing or stolen, a lawyer for the failed crypto exchange said in court, vowing to cast a wide net to secure potentially billions of dollars in funds that passed through the firm he called the “personal fiefdom” of co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried.
Tuesday’s hearing marked an inflection point for FTX’s bankruptcy case as its new leaders begin chasing down what assets they can salvage and trying to determine who might be responsible for the loss of customers’ money.
“‘What we have here is a worldwide, international organization, but which was run as a personal fiefdom of Sam Bankman-Fried.’”
“FTX was in the control of inexperienced and unsophisticated individuals, and some or all of them were compromised individuals,” said James Bromley, counsel to FTX’s new management, at its first appearance in Delaware bankruptcy court after filing the largest-ever crypto Chapter 11 case earlier this month.
Bankman-Fried didn’t respond to a request for comment.
An expanded version of this report appears at WSJ.com.
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