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Former FTX engineering chief Nishad Singh met with federal prosecutors in a bid to become the third member of Sam Bankman-Fried’s inner circle to seek a cooperation deal in the fraud case over the cryptocurrency exchange’s collapse, Bloomberg News reported. Singh, who has not been accused of wrongdoing, attended a so-called proffer session last week at the Southern District of New York U.S. Attorney’s Office, according to people familiar with the matter. At such meetings, individuals are usually granted a limited immunity to share what they know with prosecutors. A proffer session doesn’t automatically lead to a cooperation agreement. Prosecutors must weigh the value of Singh’s information before deciding whether to offer him a deal that could see him plead guilty and cooperate in exchange for possible leniency. A Singh cooperation deal would leave Bankman-Fried, who pleaded not guilty to eight criminal counts last week, increasingly isolated. Caroline Ellison, who was the chief executive of FTX’s hedge fund arm Alameda Research, and Gary Wang, FTX’s co-founder, have pleaded guilty to fraud charges and are working with authorities.

United Furniture Industries Inc. has filed for chapter 11 protection in an attempt to avoid an involuntary liquidation sought by its largest creditor, Wells Fargo & Co., the Winston-Salem (N.C.) Journal reported. Separately, United has filed its response to Wells Fargo's petition, saying it is "founded upon false and misleading statements" and is "premised on inaccurate and grossly misleading allegation." Both motions were filed in the Northern District of Mississippi. Federal bankruptcy Judge Selene Maddox set a 10 a.m. Friday hearing on the chapter 11 corporate restructuring motion. Maddox did not conduct a hearing Friday into the chapter 7 liquidating motion. United made promotional- to mid-priced upholstered furniture in the U.S. under its brand and the Lane Home Furnishings brand. The manufacturer also imported wooden bedroom and dining furniture. The United motions are the first formal legal response from United since it unexpectedly shut down on Nov. 22.

FTX’s new management and liquidators in the Bahamas have signed an agreement to cooperate and collect assets on behalf of creditors, capping off a prolonged row between the two parties over who controls the bankrupt exchange’s remaining property, the Wall Street Journal reported. The parties have agreed to share information, as well as help to secure and distribute assets that belong to FTX entities in the Bahamas and abroad, according to a Friday press release. FTX had been headquartered in the Bahamas since 2021 and its international exchange was overseen by Bahamian regulators. “There are some issues where we do not yet have a meeting of the minds, but we resolved many of the outstanding matters and have a path forward to resolve the rest,” said John J. Ray III, FTX’s new chief executive, in a statement. Plans to cooperate may resolve a prolonged battle between government officials in the Bahamas and FTX’s new U.S.-based management, who have publicly traded barbs and accused the other of misconduct for almost two months. As FTX suffered from billions in customer withdrawals and teetered toward bankruptcy, Bahamian regulators ruled that a local unit housing the international exchange was insolvent and appointed liquidators to collect billions of its assets. One day later, Sam Bankman-Fried resigned as FTX’s chief executive and passed control of FTX to Mr. Ray, who filed more than 130 FTX subsidiaries for chapter 11 protection.

The U.S. government has launched a website for victims of FTX cryptocurrency exchange founder Sam Bankman-Fried's alleged fraud to communicate with law enforcement, Reuters reported. In an order late Friday night, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan authorized federal prosecutors to use the website, and not have to contact victims individually. FTX could owe money to more than 1 million people, making it "impracticable" to contact each, prosecutors had said. Federal law requires prosecutors to contact possible crime victims to inform them of their rights, including the rights to obtain restitution, be heard in court and be protected from defendants. "If you believe that you may have been a victim of fraud by Samuel Bankman-Fried, A/K/A/ 'SBF,' please contact the victim/witness coordinator at the United States Attorney's office," the website read. The website had gone live by Friday afternoon. Bankman-Fried, 30, has pleaded not guilty to eight counts of wire fraud and conspiracy over November's collapse of FTX. Prosecutors have said he stole billions in FTX customer deposits to pay debts for his hedge fund, Alameda Research, and lied to investors about FTX's financial condition.

U.S. state officials have raised objections to Binance.US’s deal to acquire user accounts from bankrupt New York-based crypto firm Voyager Digital Ltd., saying that the buyer’s opaque finances, foreign ownership and business practices put U.S. customers at risk, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Texas financial regulators pointed to a lack of clarity on the buyer’s ties to foreign affiliates and related parties, as well as the personal finances of Binance owner Changpeng Zhao, and said they can’t protect consumers who do business with foreign entities. A bankruptcy court will consider the state officials’ views in weighing a proposed deal for Binance.US to buy Voyager’s customer accounts out of chapter 11. Binance.US stepped in as the winning bidder for Voyager’s accounts after an earlier agreement to migrate them to FTX fell through. Since the collapse of FTX, Binance’s own finances have drawn increasing scrutiny, yet the exchange has offered little in the way of transparency. The Securities and Exchange Commission has also objected to the deal, saying the parties haven’t provided enough information on Binance.US’s ability to complete a deal as large as the Voyager purchase or enough information on how they plan to protect customers’ assets against theft or loss. Separately, the U.S. government has said in court papers that a national-security review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. could affect Voyager’s ability to complete a transaction, the timing of such a deal, or its terms.

Cryptocurrency companies are disclosing more information about their internal controls and risk management following the collapse of FTX, but a level of transparency in the industry that would make many investors feel comfortable remains far off, the Wall Street Journal reported. Without a federal regulatory regime for the nascent crypto industry in the U.S., risk-management measures vary by firm and it remains difficult for outside observers — including investors and customers — to determine how effective these controls are until things go bad, industry experts say. When a crypto firm is privately held and isn’t subject to the disclosure requirements public companies face, such as third-party auditing, just learning what controls are in place can be a tall order. Although most crypto firms aren’t subject to formal federal regulation, many have adopted the enterprise-risk-management programs that U.S. watchdogs require of mainstream financial institutions in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. These rules ask companies to identify, monitor and control their risks in both their financials and operations through scenario planning and testing and framework implementation. Among the risks being monitored are cybersecurity risks; legal and compliance risks, such as those arising from financial crimes and sanctions; credit risks that arise when funds are used as collateral; and liquidity risks.

The health impact in Scott County with a population of 25,000 was catastrophic: 88% of the patients infected with HIV injected Opana ER or a generic with oxymorphone — a highly profitable opioid with a trail of misery formed over decades by the Malvern, Pa., drug firm Endo Pharmaceuticals Inc. Opana ER, the most sought Endo pill, was the “cornerstone” of the company’s pain-management business, the government says, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. In 2017, two years after the Indiana crisis, the Food and Drug Administration requested that Endo remove the crush-resistant Opana ER pills from the market as drug users were shifting from snorting to injecting oxymorphone. Thousands of government and private organizations have sued Endo for its alleged part in the nation’s opioid epidemic, which government experts say has claimed more than 500,000 lives in America. Michael Carrier, a Rutgers Law professor who has studied pharmaceutical antitrust behavior for 15 years. But oxymorphone is still a big money-maker for Endo, whose patent for the drug makes it the medication’s “gatekeeper,” the government says. The FDA didn’t ban oxymorphone in 2017, and generic pills based on Endo’s original Opana ER formulation are still available for doctors to prescribe for cancer, lower back and other pain. Endo estimated in 2017 that a royalty stream from the oxymorphone ER generic pills over time was worth “close to $265 million” — non-crush-resistant pills that Endo once told the FDA should be taken off the market for safety. Endo controls a critical patent on the generic pills through 2029. Because of patents, Endo earns a percentage of the “monopoly” profits on the generic pills distributed by Impax Laboratories LLC, a 2021 Federal Trade Commission lawsuit says. The FTC, which enforces consumer protection laws, is asking the federal court to find that the agreement between Endo and Impax violates antitrust laws and seeks unspecified monetary damages.

3M Co. has racked up more than $450 million in defense costs as it struggles to fend off allegations defective earplugs it sold to the U.S. military harmed soldiers’ hearing, court filings show, Bloomberg News reported. The company — which has lost a slew of test trials over the earplugs — put a unit into chapter 11 in July in hopes of corralling the estimated $7 billion litigation over the product. A bankruptcy court filing last month detailed how 3M’s lawyers are seeking more than $19 million in fees and costs for work on the case just between July and October, bringing the running total to $366 million. The company also projected in July it would spend another $100 million on lawyers and legal costs defending the earplug cases over the rest of 2022, bringing its potential total bill to about $466 million, according to court filings. The fee tally is just the latest twist in the more than four-year litigation over 3M’s earplugs. More than a dozen juries concluded veterans’ hearing loss was tied to the defective products and ordered their maker to pay more than $300 million in damages. 3M also has won six defense verdicts in so-called test trials. A bankruptcy judge ruled the company couldn’t use its bankruptcy filing to stop the earplug trials. More than 200,000 veterans claim they were injured by the faulty earplugs. 3M put its Aearo subsidiary into chapter 11 in Indianapolis in hopes of facilitating quicker and cheaper settlements of the earplug suits. Other companies facing mass-tort litigation — including Johnston & Johnson and Purdue Pharma LP — are relying on similar bankruptcy filings to deal with their litigation woes in that forum rather than through state- and federal-court trials and settlements. But the judge overseeing a consolidation of the earplug cases in Florida last month ruled 3M can’t shift financial responsibility for the damage awards and other liabilities to its Aearo unit in bankruptcy. 3M has set up mediation efforts in both the Florida case and the Indiana bankruptcy action in hopes of coming up with out-of-court settlements.