The Securities Commission of the Bahamas (SCB) yesterday rebuffed FTX's claims about the digital assets of its Bahamas unit held by the regulator, saying the debtors of the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange had "incomplete information," Reuters reported. Last month, the SCB said it had seized more than $3.5 billion in cryptocurrency from the unit, FTX Digital Markets, which it was holding for future repayment to customers and other creditors. FTX disputed SCB's calculations, saying its digital assets seized in November were worth just $296 million and not $3.5 billion. "Such public assertions by the chapter 11 debtors were based on incomplete information," the regulator said in a statement yesterday. There was no immediate response from FTX, which has been at odds with Bahamian officials since filing for bankruptcy protection on Nov. 11. Bahamas officials have sought access to FTX's records to help liquidate FTX Digital Markets, but the company's U.S. bankruptcy team said it did not trust them with the information. FTX's founder and former chief executive, Sam Bankman-Fried, was arrested on fraud charges and is expected to be arraigned today before U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan federal court. Read more.
In related news, the committee of FTX customers chosen to represent the interests of all exchange users in its chapter 11 case hired Jefferies and FTI Consulting Inc. as financial advisers, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Last week, the official committee brought on the law firm Paul Hastings LLP. Made up of nine members, the official committee is the sole customer group that can currently bill its legal and advisory fees to FTX. Representatives from cryptocurrency-sector companies Pulsar Global Ltd., Coincident Capital International Ltd. and Wintermute Asia PTE are among the committee members, according to court documents. A separate group of 15 international customers with $1.9 billion in claims recently hired their own lawyers at Eversheds Sutherland LLP and on Wednesday filed a lawsuit seeking a ruling from the bankruptcy court that their crypto deposits on FTX.com belong to them and that they didn’t sign over rights to their property to the exchange. The question of ownership of customers’ crypto assets has been in dispute in other crypto bankruptcy cases, with some companies in chapter 11, such as Celsius Network LLC, asserting the right to sell or otherwise use their users’ coins in chapter 11.
Read more.
