It’s week four of Sam Bankman-Fried’s demo, and on Thursday the former FTX CEO took the stand to testify on his own behalf. Bankman-Fried is charged with 7 counts of fraud and income laundering in the Southern District of New York court dwelling.
At courtroom in the Southern District of New York, Bankman-Fried wore an oversized grey fit and a purple tie. He arrived at the courthouse all-around nine:30 a.m., with his fingers folded in front of him, nodding at these who he manufactured eye make contact with with. In the course of the early morning, Bankman-Fried appeared calm, turning all over to encounter the back of the courtroom and sometimes smiling at his attorneys.
This marks the 2nd time Bankman-Fried has spoken out publicly in the courtroom following expressing “yes,” on the very first day in reaction to Judge Lewis Kaplan asking if he understood he had the suitable to testify if he needed to.
His initially phrases spoken on the stand Thursday were: “Good afternoon.”
But contrary to the rest of the demo, Kaplan sent the jury property. He 1st desired to evaluation Bankman-Fried’s responses before determining no matter whether that testimony could be shared with jurors. “I have not experienced a listening to of this mother nature in a prolonged time, if ever,” Kaplan claimed.
Once on the stand, Bankman-Fried was jittery and fast to reply to the concerns his defense law firm, Mark Cohen, was inquiring. But when it came to for Danielle Sassoon, assistant U.S. legal professional for the SDNY, to cross look at, he was slower to reply and could not keep in mind a lot of of the points.
One particular of the regions Kaplan desired to hear about was the actuality that Bankman-Fried relied on authorized counsel to draft conditions of assistance and information retention procedures, which involved employing Signal to share inside conversation.
Bankman-Fried claimed the “big image takeaway” for these insurance policies was that certain facts like KYC guidelines, regulatory mandates, compliance and formal accounting needed retention. But not factors like drafted defective stability sheets, that Caroline Ellison testified about months before.
