Gary Wang, a former top executive of the failed FTX cryptocurrency exchange, testified that Sam Bankman-Fried, the company’s founder, was the final decision maker at the firm and directed a closely related hedge fund to misuse as it pleased billions of dollars in money from FTX customers.
Over more than six hours of testimony in federal court in Manhattan on Thursday and Friday, Mr. Wang said Mr. Bankman-Fried was fully aware that a sister cryptocurrency trading firm, Alameda Research, had siphoned off $8 billion in customer money from FTX. He said Mr. Bankman-Fried had lied in his public statements in November about FTX customer assets being safe and secure.
Mr. Bankman-Fried called the shots on big issues at FTX, Mr. Wang told the jury of nine women and three men. “In the end, it was Sam’s decision,” he said.
Mr. Wang, 30, who was also a founder of FTX and programmed its code base, is a crucial witness in Mr. Bankman-Fried’s high-profile criminal fraud trial. Mr. Wang is one of Mr. Bankman-Fried’s three close advisers who have pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate against the entrepreneur, who has been charged with orchestrating a conspiracy to use as much as $10 billion of FTX customer money for all manner of personal projects. » | David Yaffe-Bellany, J. Edward Moreno and Matthew Goldstein, Reporting from the Daniel Patrick Moynihan U.S. Courthouse in Manhattan. | Friday, October 6, 2023
