Bankman-Fried Sidesteps Criminal Liability During Live Q&A 

FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried reportedly answered questions at an event, despite his lawyers’ advice. 

During the question-and-answer session at the DealBook Summit, Bankman-Fried said a few times that he had “screwed up” but stumbled to find an answer when asked about criminal liability, New York Times reporters said as they posted live updates during the event. 

“There’s a time and place for me to think about myself and my own future. I don’t think this is it,” Bankman-Fried said in response to that question, according to the report. 

During the Q&A, Bankman-Fried said that what happened at FTX was largely a risk management problem, that the losses were money that the firm’s clients had lost on margin and FTX was required to cover and that he was allowed to cover those losses with money from other clients, the report said. 

“Look, I’ve had a bad month,” he said at one point, per the report. 

In response to other questions, Bankman-Fried said there were many possibilities as to what happened to $515 million that was moved from FTX after its bankruptcy filing and that he is “confused” why the company’s U.S. arm is not processing customer withdrawals. 

Later, Bankman-Fried repeated that FTX failed on risk management and conflict of interest risk, adding, “There was no person in charge of positional risk on FTX,” per the report. 

Toward the end of the session, Bankman-Fried said, “I obviously wish that I had spent more time dwelling on the downsides and less time thinking about the upsides.”

FTX did not immediately respond to PYMNTS’ request for comment. 

As PYMNTS reported Tuesday (Nov. 29), FTX, together with its affiliates, owes their largest 50 creditors $3.1 billion, and the group of companies counts over a million creditors in total.