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Court filings show Ryan Salame tipped off the Bahaman securities regulator, telling them that FTX was sending customer funds to Alameda Research.
According to Bahamian court records filed on Dec. 14, Ryan Salame, the former co-CEO of FTX Digital Markets told the Securities Commission of the Bahamas (SCB) on Nov. 9 that FTX was sending customer funds to its sister trading firm Alameda Research.
He also told the SCB only three people had the access required to transfer client assets to Alameda: Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX co-founder Zixiao “Gary” Wang and FTX engineer Nishad Singh.
The allegation spurred SCB executive director Christina Rolle to contact the commissioner of the Royal Bahamas Police Force to request an investigation.
Related: Realized losses from FTX collapse peaked at $9B, far below earlier crises
The records reveal the first known instance of an executive from FTX or Alameda assisting authorities.
Speculation abounded on Dec. 4 as pictures purported to show Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison in a New York coffee shop a short walk away from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, leading some to believe she may have been cutting a deal with authorities in the wake of the FTX collapse.
A high-ranking executive at FTX’s Bahamian entity tipped off local regulators of potential fraud perpetrated at the cryptocurrency exchange just two days before the exchange was forced to close.
This story is developing and more information will be added as it becomes available.
The data of thousands of Celsius customers revealed in court also included its executives showing millions withdrawn from the platform in the weeks before it was suspended to the public.
Publicly available court documents related to Celsius’ bankruptcy proceedings have revealed data concerning thousands of its customers in a financial disclosure form filed on Oct 5.
The document contains over 14,500 pages and while addresses of customers have been redacted, it includes customer names, amounts, types, descriptions and timing of transactions on the platform, along with the United States dollar amounts and cryptocurrency type used, among other details.
There has been a general unease in the crypto community over the publicly available information included in the court documents.
Henry de Valence, founder of Web3 startup Penumbra Labs, told his 9,000 Twitter followers on Oct. 6, that anyone can “now dox all the on-chain activity” of any Celsius user, by matching the dates and amounts to the corresponding blockchain transaction data.
seems like, among other things, anyone can now dox all the on-chain activity and addresses of any named celsius user, by matching the dates and exact amounts to transaction datahttps://t.co/5GghqYnh1k pic.twitter.com/sn3x8AExoy
— henry (@hdevalence) October 6, 2022
The filings also reveal Celsius’ executives withdrawing over $17 million worth of crypto in the weeks before withdrawals on the platform were frozen.
Former CEO and co-founder Alex Mashinsky withdrew around $10 million from the platform in May, it’s reported co-founder and former chief strategy officer Daniel Leon withdrew about $7 million and current chief technology officer Nuke Goldstein withdrew roughly $550,000 across Celsius (CEL), USD Coin (USDC), Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH).
Related: DOJ objects to Celsius plans to reopen withdrawals and sell stablecoins
A spokesperson for Mashinsky previously stated his withdrawal was pre-planned, used to pay income taxes arising from the yield the assets produced, and his family still had $44 million worth of crypto frozen on the platform.
Celsius paused withdraws for its 1.7 million customers in June before filing a Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July due to the crypto market conditions leading the company to a $2.85 billion gap in its balance sheet.