Bahamian regulators asked Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) to access FTX’s systems and transfer all of its crypto to a government controlled wallet after it had filed for bankruptcy.
On Nov. 17, an emergency court filing from a legal team representing FTX’s debtors stated there was “credible evidence” that the Bahamian government directed the FTX CEO to transfer funds from the exchange.
The Bahamas Securities Commission confirmed that it directed the transfer of all digital assets on FTX to their digital wallet for “safekeeping.”
“Urgent interim regulatory action was necessary to protect the interests of clients and creditors of [FTX Digital Markets],” said the regulator.
It is unclear why the regulator did not disclose that they held these funds earlier – particularly on Friday when the exchange was seemingly hacked for millions of dollars. Aside from the claims in Thursday’s court filing, FTX has not issued a statement about the hack.
″[I]n connection with investigating a hack on Sunday, November 13, Mr. Bankman-Fried and [FTX co-founder Gary] Wang, stated in recorded and verified texts that “Bahamas regulators” instructed that certain post-petition transfers of Debtor assets be made by Mr. Wang and Mr. Bankman-Fried,” stated the filing. Both SBF and Wang were reportedly in custody of the Bahamian authorities at the time.
Twitter was rife with speculation that FTX’s drainer wallet actually belonged to the Bahamian government, but some users considered it unlikely that the government would have used bridges to swap assets for the U.S. dollar stablecoin, DAI.
Nick Bax, head of research at Convex Labs, had a more plausible explanation for the events. According to him, the Bahamas Securities Commission wallet likely received the FTT tokens transferred from the FTX deployer address and ETH from FTX’s exchange wallet on Nov. 13.
