FTX spent around $300 million buying senior executives houses in the Bahamas, bankruptcy court told
- Sam Bankman-Fried ran FTX like a "personal fiefdom", a bankruptcy lawyer said Tuesday.
- "Substantial amounts of money were spent on things not related to the business," James Bromley said.
FTX spent around $300 million buying houses in the Bahamas for senior executives, according to a bankruptcy lawyer.
Sullivan & Cromwell restructuring partner James Bromley told a US court that founder Sam Bankman-Fried ran the crypto exchange like his own "personal fiefdom" and that "substantial amounts of money were spent on things not related to the business", the Financial Times reported.
"We have witnessed one of the most abrupt and difficult collapses in the history of corporate America," Bromley, a lawyer on FTX's bankruptcy team, said.
Ongoing bankruptcy proceedings have "allowed everyone for the first time to see under the covers and recognise the emperor had no clothes," he added.
FTX filed for bankruptcy last week after rival exchange Binance plunged it into a solvency crisis by liquidating its holdings of native token FTT.
The group's new chief executive John Ray III slammed Bankman-Fried and other senior executives in a Chapter 11 filing, where he said that FTX held just $659,000 worth of crypto and was audited by an accounting firm with an office in the metaverse.
A team of lawyers including Bromley are now working to track down FTX's assets to start repaying the firm's creditors.