Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried claims he was unaware that there was a commingling of funds between FTX and Alameda Research. 

In an interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin at the DealBook Summit on Wednesday, Bankman-Fried said he “didn’t knowingly commingle funds” when asked whether FTX user funds were sent to the trading firm Alameda from the exchange.

Bankman-Fried went on to claim he was surprised by how big Alameda’s position was, calling it a “failure of oversight” on his part.

Sorkin then asked Bankman-Fried about Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison’s remarks in a company meeting reported by The Wall Street Journal, where Ellison told staffers that Alameda used FTX client funds to cover loans that were being recalled because of the LUNA-triggered credit crunch. Ellison reportedly disclosed that besides herself, Bankman-Fried, former FTX CTO Gary Wang , and former director of engineering Nishad Singh were aware of the use of customer funds in this manner. 

“What it seems like happened, in the middle of the year…most of the borrow/lending desks in the space blew out or closed down. It seems like Alameda had margin positions opened with them, and they moved a bunch of that over to FTX this year when they shut down,” said Bankman-Fried.

The former FTX CEO claims to be recounting these events by piecing together information over the last month, given his “limited access to data.”

When asked how he reconciled these events with his statements made on Twitter last month referring to the scenario as an $8 billion accounting mistake, Bankman-Fried said he thinks there was a “substantial discrepancy” between what the true financials were and what the dashboards they had displayed for Alameda’s account.

“That’s one of the reasons that I was surprised, when we dug into everything, at how big that [Alameda’s] position had become,” he said.

Bankman-Fried’s comments sparked an outcry from several members of the crypto community, most of whom perceived his statements as a strategy of feigning ignorance.