Sam Bankman-Fried requests weekday freedom for legal defense work
Seven days following the Department of Justice’s bail revocation for disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, he is now seeking permission to spend five weekdays outside to collaborate with his legal team on his defense case.
According to a letter sent to US District Judge Lewis Kaplan on Friday, as reported by Bloomberg, legal representatives of SBF stated that their client faced difficulties in thoroughly reviewing the extensive document accumulation related to the case while confined to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.
In correspondence, Christian Everdell, the attorney for SBF, conveyed the following statement:
“Just last week the government produced three-quarters of a million pages of Slack communications, which were supposed to be produced months ago, that Mr. Bankman-Fried will have no hope of reviewing under this schedule”.
According to Everdell, facilitating Bankman-Fried’s access to his legal team and allowing him to use an internet-enabled laptop within the courthouse premises would accelerate the proceedings. The lawyer emphasized the significance of this arrangement, particularly given that his fraud trial is scheduled to start in October.
Maintaining his innocence, SBF is confronted with allegations of masterminding an elaborate fraud scheme, which involved unauthorized access to billions of dollars from FTX customer funds for personal use.
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Prosecutors reportedly argued that unless Bankman-Fried promptly provides information about the advice he received and its origin, he should be precluded from introducing this defense during the trial, as per their contention.
The prosecutors reportedly mentioned their ability to provide Bankman-Fried with information on hard drives. These drives could be used on computers at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC), where individuals await their trials.
However, due to limitations, not all the information can be stored on a laptop. A plan to move him for laptop access was denied by prison authorities. The Judge’s decision on his requests is awaited ahead of the trial.
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