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The political ties developed by the FTX brokerage have been under the spotlight as investigations into the fraud that led to the $10 billion loss are extended.
In the US Congress, at least 196 of the elected members of the Senate and House, out of 535, would have received donations from executives linked to the exchange, according to the Coindesk website.
The donations vary in size, and can be as little as US$2,9, but they point to the interest of Sam Bankman-Fried and his partners in strengthening political ties, especially due to the vote on legislation that could tighten the rules for the competition.
SBF and FTX had an office about 200m from the US Treasury Department, in addition to neighboring the White House. According to a spokeswoman for the seat of American power, Samuel met with officials linked to President Joe Biden, of whom he was the biggest campaign contributor, about 4 times in 2022. His brother, Gabriel Bankman-Fried, also participated 2 meetings at the White House, both with advisors to the president.
According to the fraud management procedure in the US, recipients of stolen money must return the money the moment they are identified.
A similar case occurred with Bernard Madoff, responsible for the biggest financial fraud in US history estimated at US$64 billion (considering the value with the imaginary interest created by Madoff in his Ponzi scheme).
In the case of the former president of Nasdaq and his pyramid scheme, the lawyer in the case reached an agreement with the widow of one of the biggest beneficiaries, who had to return US$7 billion. Jeffrey Picower invested $600 million with Madoff, earning 950% on the scheme. With that, those responsible for the scandal that rocked Wall Street in the midst of the 2008 crisis, managed to recover US$14,5 billion of the approximately US$19 billion contributed to the pyramid, through a questionable means, given that it involved punishing thousands of retirees and other people who would have shared in the gains. Many considered that the attitude meant punishing the victims.
According to Coindesk, 34 of the 196 congressmen who received donations from SBF and its partners claimed to have donated the money to charity. Another 19 plan to voluntarily return the money to the person responsible for managing the FTX restructuring.
Lawyers in the case claim to have recovered $5 billion, but things are not as they seem.
Last week, the lawyers responsible for the case gave statements pointing to the recovery of assets in the order of US$5 billion.
Many users on networks like Twitter pointed to a bizarre detail in the claim.
Of the $5 billion reportedly recovered, around $2 billion is in crypto held by FTX, with $500 million in FTTs, FTX's own tokens.
There is no hypothesis that justifies considering such tokens as having any value after the collapse of the exchange.
