According to a February 17 Bloomberg report, Bahamian bank Deltec is under a new lawsuit that reads it provided FTX fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried with a “secret” line of credit that enabled him to buy Tether.
The Bankman-Fried Alameda Research hedge fund fueled Tether’s growth in part by using a secret short-term line of credit worth billions of dollars from Deltec, according to documents reviewed by Bloomberg that were originally filed Friday in federal court in Florida.
According to Bloomberg, Caroline Ellison, CEO of Alameda Research and former girlfriend of Bankman-Fried, “flipped more than 7,000 pages of chats on Telegram” and cooperated with the investigation.
Reporter Zeke Faux, who originally published the story, reached out to X to release a series of documents detailing communications between key FTX players and Alameda Research.
“Money for Sam traditionally = money for Giancarlo (Devasini), so overall good,” – stated former FTX general manager for digital markets, Ryan Salame, in a message contained in the documents.
The report states that Deltec lawyer Desiree Moore claims that the bank’s CEO Jean Chalopin was unaware of FTX’s cryptocurrency-related crimes until they were made public, despite a dispute launched by many of the exchange’s victims.
Moore was quoted by Bloomberg and claimed that “the allegations are based largely on unsubstantiated statements by individuals who we know are settling their lawsuits with plaintiffs in exchange for providing information.”
In November 2023. Bankman-Fried was convicted of seven counts of fraud after a grueling month-long trial, during which a number of employees from Alameda Research and FTX, including FTX co-founder Gary Wang, former FTX engineering chief Nishad Singh and Ellison, testified against the disgraced “cryptocurrency kingpin.”
All testified as part of a cooperation agreement with the U.S. government in hopes of reducing the severity of their own criminal convictions.
Bankman-Fried’s sentencing is currently scheduled for March 28, 2024, and he is currently being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. On Wednesday, February 21, he will return to federal court in Manhattan for a Curcio hearing on his new legal representation.
