By Luc Cohen
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Sam Bankman-Fried and other FTX executives received billions of dollars in secret loans from the crypto mogul’s Alameda Research, the hedge fund’s former chief told a judge in her guilty plea for her role in the exchange’s collapse.
Caroline Ellison, former chief executive of Alameda Research, said she agreed with Bankman-Fried to hide from FTX’s investors, lenders and customers that the hedge fund could borrow unlimited sums from the exchange, according a transcript of her Dec. 19 plea hearing that was unsealed on Friday.
“We prepared certain quarterly balance sheets that concealed the extent of Alameda’s borrowing and the billions of dollars in loans that Alameda had made to FTX executives and to related parties,” Ellison told U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams in Manhattan federal court, according to the transcript.
Ellison is cooperating with prosecutors as part of her plea agreement.
Bankman-Fried has been accused of orchestrating an “epic” fraud that led to the loss of billions of dollars of customer and investor funds.
He was released on Thursday on a $250 million bail. He has acknowledged risk-management failures at FTX but said he does not believe he has criminal liability and he has not entered a plea.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Writing by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Del.; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
