By Dietrich Knauth
(Reuters) – Bankrupt crypto exchange FTX on Sunday sued the liquidators overseeing the wind-down of its Bahamian affiliate FTX Digital Markets, accusing them of wrongly claiming ownership of the exchange’s assets.
FTX’s U.S. based bankruptcy team, led by new CEO John Ray, said in its lawsuit that the liquidators were laying claim to FTX.com’s cryptocurrency, intellectual property, and customer relationships.
FTX called FTX DM a “fraudulent enterprise”, initially set up only to be a “local service company”, which did not own the FTX.com exchange or any of the cryptocurrency seized.
FTX has been at odds with Bahamian officials ever since filing for bankruptcy protection on Nov. 11. The Securities Commission of the Bahamas began liquidation proceedings against FTX DM a day before the U.S. bankruptcy filing of FTX Trading and more than 100 affiliates, and the two sides have sparred over ownership of FTX assets and access to company data.
FTX’s founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has been arrested on fraud charges and is expected to face trial in October.
FTX reported this month that Bankman-Fried took $2.2 billion in funds from the company during a period when the crypto exchange lost $8 billion of customer money.
(Reporting by Dietrich Knauth)
