CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 78.1% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.
US English

Bankman-Fried denied bail

By Martyn Cornell

Edited by Charlie Mellor

00:13, 14 December 2022

US attorney Damian Williams in front of board listing allegations against Sam Bankman-Fried
Damian Williams, US attorney for the Southern District of New York, announces the indictment facing Samuel Bankman-Fried on 13 December – Photo: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images

Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of the collapsed crypto exchange FTX, must stay in custody after his arrest on Monday, a court in the Bahamas has ordered, because his risk of fleeing was too great.

In a three-hour hearing at a courthouse in Nassau, capital of the Bahamas, the country’s chief magistrate, Joyann Ferguson-Pratt, was told by a prosecutor, Franklyn Williams, that Bankman-Fried was a flight risk and should be held in custody because he still had access to enough financial resources to flee elsewhere.

Bankman-Fried has been charged by prosecutors in the United States with defrauding investors. He also faces civil securities fraud charges.

His lawyer, Jerone Roberts, told the court that his client was a permanent resident and property owner in the Bahamas, with no incentive to flee the country.

Bankman-Fried would be willing to submit to a curfew and electronic monitoring, Roberts said, adding that his client had to take medication for depression, and doses of Adderall every four hours for attention deficit disorder.

Police escort to the courthouse

Bankman-Fried, who was wearing a white shirt and a blue suit, had arrived at the courthouse with a large police escort. His parents, Stanford Law School professors Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, were in the courtroom for the hearing.

After the judge denied bail, Bankman-Fried – who will remain in the custody of the Bahamian authorities until an extradition hearing scheduled for 8 February – was hugged by his parents before being taken away.

XRP/USD

0.52 Price
-2.970% 1D Chg, %
Long position overnight fee -0.0753%
Short position overnight fee 0.0069%
Overnight fee time 21:00 (UTC)
Spread 0.01168

BTC/USD

63,467.95 Price
-1.190% 1D Chg, %
Long position overnight fee -0.0616%
Short position overnight fee 0.0137%
Overnight fee time 21:00 (UTC)
Spread 106.00

BCH/USD

475.20 Price
-1.960% 1D Chg, %
Long position overnight fee -0.0753%
Short position overnight fee 0.0069%
Overnight fee time 21:00 (UTC)
Spread 2.50

ETH/USD

3,125.28 Price
-0.550% 1D Chg, %
Long position overnight fee -0.0616%
Short position overnight fee 0.0137%
Overnight fee time 21:00 (UTC)
Spread 6.00

Too early to say if customers will retrieve assets

Meanwhile the new chief executive of FTX, John J. Ray III, a lawyer who specialises in corporate restructuring, told politicians in Washington yesterday that it was “too early to tell” whether customers of FTX would get their money back.

Ray testified for roughly four hours before the House Committee on Financial Services, telling committee members that he had found an “unprecedented” lack of record keeping at the company, and his team was still in the early stages of sorting through the exchange’s assets to find money that could be used to repay creditors and consumers.

It was also revealed by Ray that FTX kept few records, tracked invoices in the messaging app Slack and used the consumer tax software QuickBooks, which was, he said, “unusual” for a multi-billion-dollar company.

He said that FTX executives appeared to have carried out “really just old-fashioned embezzlement” rather than the sort of “highly sophisticated” fraud carried out at  Enron, the energy trading company that collapsed in 2001 after an accounting scandal. Ray oversaw the unwinding of Enron after its failure.

One committee member asked Ray what role Bankman-Fried would play in FTX in the future, to which Ray replied: “The role he’s currently playing: zero.”

Related topics

Rate this article

Related reading

The difference between trading assets and CFDs
The main difference between CFD trading and trading assets, such as commodities and stocks, is that you don’t own the underlying asset when you trade on a CFD.
You can still benefit if the market moves in your favour, or make a loss if it moves against you. However, with traditional trading you enter a contract to exchange the legal ownership of the individual shares or the commodities for money, and you own this until you sell it again.
CFDs are leveraged products, which means that you only need to deposit a percentage of the full value of the CFD trade in order to open a position. But with traditional trading, you buy the assets for the full amount. In the UK, there is no stamp duty on CFD trading, but there is when you buy stocks, for example.
CFDs attract overnight costs to hold the trades (unless you use 1-1 leverage), which makes them more suited to short-term trading opportunities. Stocks and commodities are more normally bought and held for longer. You might also pay a broker commission or fees when buying and selling assets direct and you’d need somewhere to store them safely.
Capital Com is an execution-only service provider. The material provided in this article is for information purposes only and should not be understood as investment advice. Any opinion that may be provided on this page does not constitute a recommendation by Capital Com or its agents and has not been prepared in accordance with the legal requirements designed to promote investment research independence. While the information in this communication, or on which this communication is based, has been obtained from sources that Capital.com believes to be reliable and accurate, it has not undergone independent verification. No representation or warranty, whether expressed or implied, is made as to the accuracy or completeness of any information obtained from third parties. If you rely on the information on this page, then you do so entirely at your own risk.

Still looking for a broker you can trust?

Join the 610,000+ traders worldwide that chose to trade with Capital.com

1. Create & verify your account 2. Make your first deposit 3. You’re all set. Start trading