Sam Bankman-Fried co-founded FTX in 2019 and is its CEO. Photo FTX
Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced former wunderkind who found the crypto exchange FTX, is actually going to testify at this own trial on charges of fraud. This is like something out of an episode of “Law and Order” or a thriller movie based on a John Grisham novel. And it is a big risk for someone looking at possibly decades behind bars.
Mark Cohen, a lawyer representing Sam Bankman-Fried, said so in a court filing.
Everyone knows that you are not supposed to testify at your own trial, don’t they? At least that’s what they always say in those movies. Testifying on your own behalf at a criminal trial is said to be a big risk because the prosecutor can then just about ask you anything in order to make you look bad to the jury. (In civil trials – at least in the US – people can be compelled to testify even when they are the defendant.)
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The right to remain silent – to decline to answer any question asked by law enforcement when you are the one being investigated – is sacrosanct. And so is the right to not be called to testify at your own trial. There are, however, some exceptions like if you are granted immunity for your testimony.
In America, where this right is deep-seated in the very first amendment to the US Constitution – along with the right of freedom of speech – neither judge, nor a jury, may infer anything from the fact that the defendant declined to testify.
However, in most democratic nations this is not the case. In England and Israel, for example, the judge/jury can take into consideration when determining the verdict if the defendant declined to answer direct allegations made by witnesses during the trial. In these countries one does not have to answer police questions – even with a lawyer present. But if you do not answer the questions asked at the time of the interrogation and later give answers to them, the jury can consider that you may have waited to make up answers, etc.
But not in America. Even O.J. Simpson backed down from his demands to testify in his own murder trial in 1995 after his lawyers made repeated pleas for him to understand why he would make a terrible witness.
This is because of exactly what we have all seen on the lawyer shows: the prosecutor gets the defendant to trip up somehow. The defendant either makes an admission about something that makes him look guilty, contradicts himself, or straight up has a breakdown on the stand and admits his guilt.
In November 2022, FTX and Alameda Research filed for bankruptcy. It was later revealed that Alameda Research owed billions of dollars to FTX, and that FTX had lent Alameda money from customer funds.
Sam Bankman-Fried stands accused of seven counts of fraud, embezzlement of billions of dollars and conspiracy. If convicted on all counts, he could be sentenced to as much as 115 years in jail. The charges came after his FTX cryptocurrency exchange company went bust a few weeks ago. The big question over the fall of FTX is “what happened to all of the money that people left with the company?” FTX was a crypto bank, so to speak, a place where people could park their virtual assets. But unlike with banks, there is no regulation over the handling of cryptos and FTX is said to have moved people’s cryptos around, basically that the company spent their money.
Based in the Bahamas, FTX was a cryptocurrency exchange that said it was built by traders, for traders. FTX offers industry-first derivatives, options, volatility products and leveraged tokens. FTX had more than one million traders using its services when it failed.
