Judge Rejects FTX’s Bankman-Fried’s Motions to Dismiss Criminal Charges

<p>The federal
judge overseeing the case against the FTX Founder, Sam Bankman-Fried has now
rejected all pre-trial motions filed by his legal teams to dismiss 10 of the 13 criminal
charges against him. Judge Lewis Kaplan of the District Court in New York, who earlier denied three of the motions, has now struck out the rest,
saying they are “either moot or without merit.”</p><p>Judge Slams
Bankman-Fried’s Motions</p><p>In December
last year, Bankman-Fried was <a href="https://www.financemagnates.com/cryptocurrency/sam-bankman-fried-arrested-in-the-bahamas-amid-us-criminal-charges/" target="_blank" rel="follow">arrested in the Bahamas</a> over <a href="https://www.financemagnates.com/cryptocurrency/ftx-the-rise-the-fall-and-the-reaction/" target="_blank" rel="follow">the collapse of FTX</a>. He was subsequently extradited
to the United States <a href="https://www.financemagnates.com/cryptocurrency/news/ftxs-sam-bankman-fried-pleads-not-guilty-to-us-criminal-charges/" target="_blank" rel="follow">on eight counts</a> of wire fraud and a conspiracy charge to
commit wire fraud against FTX’s customers and its sister trading firm, Alameda’s
lenders. He was also charged with conspiracy to commit commodities and
securities fraud as well as violating money laundering and US federal campaign
finance laws.</p><p>However, in
a superseding indictment unveiled in February, US prosecutors slammed
Bankman-Fried with an additional four charges: substantive commodities fraud, securities fraud, conspiracy to commit bank fraud and the operation of an
unlicensed money transmitting business. An additional charge filed in March accused
the FTX Founder of <a href="https://www.financemagnates.com/cryptocurrency/sam-bankman-fried-hit-with-additional-40m-chinese-bribery-charge/" target="_blank" rel="follow">bribing Chinese
officials</a> in 2021,
thereby violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. These other criminal counts have increased the number of charges to 13.</p><p>Reacting to these developments, Bankman-Fried’s
lawyers in May filed
several pre-trial motions to dismiss all charges but three: conspiracy to
commit commodities fraud, securities fraud and conspiracy to commit money
laundering. Alternatively, they asked the court to separate the charges from
the former FTX CEO’s first trial billed for early October.</p><p>Judge
Defends Position</p><p>In
mid-June, Judge Kaplan rejected three of the motions and ruled
that extra charges slapped on Bankman-Fried after his
extradition to the US should be set aside from his upcoming trial. On Tuesday, the judge further ruled out the rest of the motions.</p><p>“Dismissal
of charges is an ‘extraordinary remedy’ reserved only for extremely limited
circumstances implicating fundamental rights,” Judge Kaplan wrote in a <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.590940/gov.uscourts.nysd.590940.167.0_3.pdf" target="_blank" rel="follow">41-page ruling</a> defending his decision.
“The Second Circuit has deemed dismissal an ‘extreme sanction’ that has been
upheld ‘only in very limited and extreme circumstances’, and should be
‘reserved for the truly extreme cases’, ‘especially where serious criminal
conduct is involved’.”</p><p>Bankman-Fried
has <a href="https://www.financemagnates.com/cryptocurrency/news/ftxs-sam-bankman-fried-pleads-not-guilty-to-us-criminal-charges/" target="_blank" rel="follow">pled
not guilty</a> to all the charges slammed on
him. On the
contrary, two of his top associates, Caroline Elision, Alameda Research’s former CEO, and Zixiao (Gary) Wang, the Co-Founder of Alameda Research and FTX, <a href="https://www.financemagnates.com/cryptocurrency/sam-bankman-frieds-two-top-associates-plead-guilty-to-criminal-charges/" target="_blank" rel="follow">submitted a guilty plea in December</a> to criminal charges filed by US prosecutors.</p><p>Meanwhile,
FTX, which <a href="https://www.financemagnates.com/cryptocurrency/troubled-ftx-files-for-bankruptcy-as-ceo-bankman-fried-resigns/">filed for bankruptcy
protection</a> in November,
is still undergoing court proceedings in the District of Delaware. This is even as new management of the bankrupt crypto exchange disclosed yesterday (Monday) that they have <a href="https://www.financemagnates.com/cryptocurrency/ftx-bankruptcy-team-releases-second-investigative-report-7b-recovered/" target="_blank" rel="follow">recovered $7 billion</a> out of $8.7 billion owed to
customers.</p><p>TradingView integrates FYERS; Crypto.com opens innovation lab; <a href="https://www.financemagnates.com/forex/news-nuggets-27-june-tradingview-integrates-fyers-cryptocom-opens-innovation-lab/" target="_blank" rel="follow">read today's news nuggets</a>.</p>

This article was written by Solomon Oladipupo at www.financemagnates.com.