{"id":1085865,"date":"2023-01-06T11:10:21","date_gmt":"2023-01-06T16:10:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/sbf-seeks-access-to-450-million-in-seized-robinhood-shares-to-pay-his-legal-fees\/1085865\/"},"modified":"2023-01-06T11:10:21","modified_gmt":"2023-01-06T16:10:21","slug":"sbf-seeks-access-to-450-million-in-seized-robinhood-shares-to-pay-his-legal-fees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/sbf-seeks-access-to-450-million-in-seized-robinhood-shares-to-pay-his-legal-fees\/1085865\/","title":{"rendered":"SBF Seeks Access To $450 Million In Seized Robinhood Shares To Pay His Legal Fees"},"content":{"rendered":"

SBF Seeks Access To $450 Million In Seized Robinhood Shares To Pay His Legal Fees<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Sam Bankman-Fried is fighting to persuade a US court that he should be able to access Robinhood shares worth around $450 million to help pay for his legal fees. The problem: the Department of Justice – which does not believe the 56 million shares of Robinhood were property of the bankrupt FTX estate – moved on Wednesday to seize the shares. Another problem: both FTX and BlockFi are also laying claim to the shares as well.\u00a0 And while FTX\u2019s creditors hope the shares can help make them whole, Bankman-Fried said he needs the funds to cover his legal fees.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lawyers for the disgraced former CEO in a Delaware court filing on Thursday that the 56.3 million Robinhood shares should be returned to Bankman-Fried because the company that owns them, Emergent Fidelity Technology Ltd, is not part of the bankruptcy estate (at least not yet). Bankman-Fried owns 90% of Emergent. He and former FTX chief technology officer Gary Wang\u00a0 borrowed $546 million from Alameda Research (in other words used money stolen from FTX clients) to buy the Robinhood shares, according to court filings. Robinhood\u2019s shares closed at $8.11 on Thursday, giving the stake a value of $456 million.<\/p>\n

\u201cMr. Bankman-Fried has not been found criminally or civilly liable for fraud, and it is improper for the FTX Debtors to ask the Court to simply assume that everything Mr. Bankman-Fried ever touched is presumptively fraudulent,\u201d his lawyers said in the filing. They added that Bankman-Fried\u2019s need to pay his legal bills is greater than the \u201ceconomic loss\u201d that FTX faces, citing several legal precedents; we are confident that FTX clients would certainly beg to differ.<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Mr. Bankman-Fried requires some of these funds to pay for his criminal defense,” <\/strong>the filing read, noting that the disgraced FTX founder is \u201cfacing potential criminal liability.\u201d Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty to all charges, including wire fraud and campaign finance violations, in New York Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Bankman-Fried\u2019s move is the latest in an ongoing ownership dispute over the shares. The equities, once worth more than $600 million, have plunged since they\u2019ve been stuck in legal limbo.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, court revealed that more than 56 million Robinhood shares are on the line, worth a little more than $450 million as of Friday\u2019s prices. The shares belong to Emergent Fidelity Technologies, of which Bankman-Fried is the 90% stockholder, the filing added.<\/p>\n

Representing Bankman-Fried in the bankruptcy proceedings is Gregory T. Donilon from Montgomery McCracken Walker & Rhoads LLP.<\/p>\n

Bankman-Fried\u2019s criminal lawyers are Cohen & Gresser\u2019s Christian R. Everdell and Mark Stewart Cohen, who recently represented Ghislaine Maxwell in her sex trafficking case.<\/p>\n

Bankman-Fried\u2019s personal legal fees are not public, but Sullivan and Cromwell LLC, the firm leading FTX\u2019s restructuring, accepted a $12 million retainer from the exchange before it filed for Chapter 11 on Nov. 11, 2022. As of Nov. 3, 2022, the firm had already cashed in more than $3.4 million of its retainer, nearly 30%.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nFri, 01\/06\/2023 – 14:45<\/span><\/p>\n

From:Zerohedge<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SBF Seeks Access To $450 Million In Seized Robinhood Shares To Pay His Legal Fees Sam Bankman-Fried is fighting to persuade a US court that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1085865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbimBl-4ytX","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1085865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1085865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1085865\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1085865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1085865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1085865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}