Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), the FTX CEO, no longer has legal representation from Paul Weiss, citing a conflict of interest.
The choice to discontinue representation following SBF’s tweets was judged to obstruct the law firm’s reorganization efforts.
SBF’s Cryptic Tweets Complicate Case
SBF began publishing a series of tweets on November 14 that garnered a lot of interest on Crypto Twitter. However, the action-fueled rumors that the cryptic tweets were sent to prevent bots from spotting simultaneously removed messages.
Martin Flumenbaum, an attorney for Paul Weiss, claimed that SBF’s “incessant and disruptive tweeting” was having a negative influence on the reorganization despite there being no evidence of malice.
“We informed Mr. Bankman-Fried several days ago, after the filing of the FTX bankruptcy, that conflicts have arisen that precluded us from representing him.”
The law firm’s choice to withdraw from assisting SBF came at the same time as Elizabeth Holmes, a fellow fraudster, received her much-anticipated prison sentence after being found guilty of criminal fraud.
At the moment, SBF is under investigation for a number of things, including the misappropriation of customer funds and the publication of bankruptcy-related papers.
Paul Weiss Might Still Represent SBF
Despite providing notice to the defendants, the court may reject an attorney’s motion and force them to continue representation, which may seem unlikely given the concerns the law firm cited regarding SBF’s behavior.
Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, the CEO of Binance, has talked openly about the moment when Binance was on the verge of saving FTX from bankruptcy. He said;
“When he came to me, I knew he was desperate. If we can’t help him, there’s probably nobody else that would. Probably a bunch of people passed on the deal before us.”
Due diligence found deeper issues, thus the takeover agreement was scrapped.
SBF according to reports, is to be extradited to the US from the Bahamas for questioning. The thirty-year-old former billionaire will be required to explain among other things, how roughly a billion dollars in customer funds were wiped out.
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