New revelations document the financial debacle of the now bankrupt cryptocurrency platform.
Pandora’s box is wide open. As cryptocurrency giant FTX sinks deeper into bankruptcy and its myriad proceedings, revelations about the company’s outrageous practices are rife. Latest, the delivery of Amazon parcels by an airline company from Miami to the headquarters, located 300 kilometers away, in the Bahamas.
The company’s employees set up this private jet delivery system after realizing that the e-commerce platform did not deliver to the paradise island where they lived, according to the Financial Times, which reveals the ‘information. An FTX employee opened up to the British daily: “It was a bit crazy. If Sam (Bankman-Fried, boss of the company) said OK, it was good to take. Whatever the amount.”
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This complete lack of control, widely documented by company executives, also led FTX to spend $300 million (€287 million) on real estate investments. It was the company’s lawyers themselves who explained it before the United States Bankruptcy Court in Delaware. “Most of these purchases were for homes and vacation properties used by senior executives“, they said. These “senior executiveswere mostly in their thirties, some even younger.
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The real estate held by FTX notably included six residences worth several million euros each, all located in a luxury complex in the Bahamas. Among them, the villa of Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of FTX, estimated at around forty million dollars, shared with several executives of the company, including Caroline Ellison. The parents of the young boss also enjoyed their villa in the Bahamas, estimated at 16.4 million dollars.
To travel from their lavish homes to the FTX offices, or elsewhere internationally, staff stationed in the Bahamas had a “full set of cars and gas covered for all (…) and unlimited travel and fully covered for all offices worldwide“, entrusted an employee to the Financial Times.
$200 per day for meals
The other FTX offices, indeed, were not left out. In California, where the cryptocurrency platform was also established, each employee benefited from a credit of 200 dollars (191 euros) per day on the DoorDash application, which delivers meals and food to their homes. An insane budget given the price of a meal on the application. If Bahamian employees didn’t have such a perk, their offices included a hair salon, massage parlor, grocery store, and even 24-hour food service. All this at the expense of the princess.
«It was kids leading kids», summarizes a former employee of FTX. “I had never seen so much money in my life. Like all employees in my opinion, including SBF (Sam Bankman-Fried, Ed)“, he adds. Internally, some fanciful decisions have been questioned. Like the fabulous contract of 135 million dollars so that the stadium of the Miami basketball team bears the name of the company. Employees have questioned the relevance of such an expense on the company’s messaging system. In vain.
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«They never supervised the performance we were actually getting. Nobody really kept track of what happened after getting the deala former marketing department employee lamented about FTX’s general management. A finding confirmed by John Ray, who took over the helm of the company since its bankruptcy was declared. “The (company) did not have the type of disbursement controls that I believe are appropriate for a commercial enterprise“, he notes in documents in the file.
The cryptocurrency platform, once one of the most influential in the world, placed itself on November 11 under the protection of Chapter XI of the American bankruptcy law. For some specialists, FTX even represents the “Lehman Brothersof cryptocurrencies, in reference to the bank that went bankrupt during the 2008 crisis.
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