Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, pocketed $300 million after a big funding raise last year, the media reported.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the beleaguered crypto exchange secured $420 million in October 2021.
“Nearly three-quarters of the money, $300 million, went instead to FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who sold some of his personal stake in the company,” the report mentioned, citing FTX financial records and sources.
Bankman-Fried apparently sold some of his stake in FTX to get that much, but it still meant he got a lot of money that investors probably wanted to go directly into the company, the report said.
Meanwhile, a new court filing in the US concerning FTX has revealed a crypto empire that was massively mismanaged and possibly fraudulent — a “complete failure of corporate controls”.
The company never had board meetings, and crypto deposited by customers wasn’t recorded on the balance sheet, according to the filing.
“Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here,” FTX’s new CEO, John J. Ray III, wrote in a court filing this week.
Corporate funds were used to purchase real estate for personal use, and employees and executives put their names on homes purchased with company funds, according to the filing.
FTX is a company that was recently valued at $32 billion.