Cryptocurrency exchange FTX's former top lawyer testified yesterday that its founder Sam Bankman-Fried asked him to come up with "legal justifications" for why it was missing $7 billion in customer funds four days before the company declared bankruptcy, Reuters reported. Can Sun, FTX's former general counsel, testified at Bankman-Fried's fraud trial that the company on Nov. 7, 2022, asked investment fund Apollo for emergency capital to cover a wave of customer withdrawals. After Apollo requested FTX's financial statements, Sun testified, either Bankman-Fried or another executive sent him a spreadsheet indicating the cryptocurrency exchange was billions of dollars short of being able to satisfy customer withdrawals and that it also was owed billions of dollars by Bankman-Fried's crypto-focused hedge fund Alameda Research. "I was shocked," said Sun, who testified under a non-prosecution agreement in the third week of the trial in Manhattan federal court. Sun told jurors that after FTX shared the spreadsheet with Apollo, Bankman-Fried pulled him aside at the Bahamas luxury apartment complex where the 31-year-old former billionaire lived and told him Apollo had asked for a legal justification for the missing funds.
