Two US Senators, Elizabeth Warren and Sheldon Whitehouse, in a letter urged Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate Sam Bankman-Fried and others for the FTX collapse and hold them accountable to the fullest extent of the law.
The two Democrat Senators wanted the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate the “disturbing allegations of fraud and illicit behavior that led to the collapse of FTX” and hold the company’s executives accountable “to the fullest extent of the law.”
In the letter on Wednesday, the lawmakers reminded Attorney General Merrick Garland and Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Polite of the DOJ’s commitment to prosecuting white-collar criminals.
Warren was a Democrat presidential aspirant. She has been a long-time critic of the crypto industry and was monitoring the FTX collapse and chain effects on the industry.
On Tuesday, Warren, Dick Durbin, and Tina Smith shot off a letter to Fidelity Financial Services to reconsider allowing retail clients to include bitcoin in their retirement plans.
Although Warren’s letter to the DOJ sought to investigate and prosecute all FTX executives in the alleged fraud, the founder of SBF seems to be the main target of their ire.
They noted Bankman-Fried had already revealed his interest in self-enrichment in 2021 when he siphoned $300 million into his own wallet.
Bankman-Fried began a career in crypto trading by founding Alameda Research in 2017 alongside Tara Mac Aulay. Later, Aulay and a group quit over concerns about risk management. In 2019, SBF moved to Hong Kong and started FTX, and built the exchange into a business worth more than $40 billion in less than three years.
In 2021, SBF moved its headquarters to the Bahamas expecting lesser pressure from the regulators.
