Bankman-Fried Desires 2nd Crack at ‘Bad Legal Advice’ Defense

Sam Bankman-Fried needs one more shot at mounting a “bad lawful counsel” protection.

In a submitting Monday (Oct. 9) evening, lawyers for the former FTX head have requested the court’s permission to query company co-founder Gary Wang about lawful information he gained when agreeing to loans from Alameda Study, FTX’s sister organization.

As PYMNTS has described, Decide Lewis Kaplan has already blocked Bankman-Fried from introducing evidence in assistance of an “advice of counsel defense” at his trial, which commences its next 7 days on Tuesday (Oct. 10).

“Bankman-Fried and his legal professionals experienced been hoping to argue that the involvement of FTX’s very own legal professionals in numerous of the matters beneath scrutiny belies the skill of the FTX CEO to have acted with prison intent,” that report said.

In the court filing, the lawyers argue that the prosecution has presently gotten Wang to testify about the $200 million to $300 million of loans from Alameda, which he applied for enterprise investments and buy of a home in the Bahamas.

Wang had instructed the FBI he “didn’t imagine the attorneys would notify him to sign a little something that was unlawful,” the filing reported.

“Mr. Wang’s being familiar with of the lawyers’ involvement in the loans is immediately appropriate to Mr. Bankman-Fried’s excellent religion and absence of felony intent,” protection lawyers wrote.

“Mr. Wang’s knowing that these have been genuine financial loans — structured by lawyers and memorialized in formal promissory notes that imposed real curiosity payment obligations — is pertinent to rebut the inference that these were being basically sham loans directed by Mr. Bankman-Fried to conceal the supply of the resources.”

Wang, FTX’s previous main technological innovation officer, is 1 of a few previous superior-amount FTX executives who have pleaded guilty to their position in the exchange’s collapse and have agreed to cooperate in the prosecution of what the federal government has known as “one of the major economical frauds in American heritage.”

In courtroom previous 7 days, Wang testified about what he said were fake assurances from Bankman-Fried to FTX consumers and buyers that the trade was a safe buying and selling platform with sophisticated risk mitigation measures to safeguard client belongings.

And despite the fact that he was allegedly conscious of the multi-billion-dollar deficit at Alameda Study and FTX, Bankman-Fried continuously informed clients and buyers that “FTX was great.”

“FTX was not high-quality,” Wang explained to the jury, “because FTX did not have adequate belongings for buyer withdrawals.”