The entire world is witnessing the ordeal that followed suit after the collapse of FTX. As Sam Bankman-Fried sits under house arrest and pens down an elaborate blog post, media houses across the globe were evidently curious.
Back in December, SBF was granted a $250 million bail. It has been recognized as the highest pre-trial bail bond in the history of the United States. Considering the magnitude of the bail, the judge reportedly asked two other individuals of “considerable means” to sign the bond. However, the identities of these guarantors were undisclosed.
Contesting the same, eight media houses including the Associated Press, Bloomberg, CNBC, Dow Jones, The Financial Times, Insider, and the Washington Post wrote a letter to the New York District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan. Attorneys from Davis Wright Tremaine LLP were representing these media houses.
According to the letter, the attorneys argued that the public entailed the right to know the guarantors of SBF. They wrote, “the public’s right to know Bankman-Fried’s guarantors outweighed their privacy and safety rights.”
SBF’s parents, who signed the bond as well, got several threats over the last few months. Therefore, the names of the guarantors were kept secret. Previously, SBF’s attorneys highlighted the same, saying,
“If the two remaining sureties are publicly identified, they will likely be subjected to probing media scrutiny and potentially targeted for harassment, despite having no substantive connection to the case.”
Here’s what the media’s lawyers have to say about SBF’s guarantors
The attorneys compared SBF’s case to Jeffery Epstein’s child sex trafficking case to demonstrate how less severe the downfall of FTX was. As a result, they requested to know who the guarantors were. It should be noted that the names of the bond guarantors were concealed in Ghislaine Maxwell’s lawsuit from December 2020.
Further elaborating on the same, the lawyers said,
“While Mr. Bankman-Fried is accused of serious financial crimes, a public association with him does not carry nearly the same stigma as with the Jeffrey Epstein child sex trafficking scandal.”
As this case continues to take unexpected turns, users hope that justice will be served.