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(Kitco News) -
Zhe “Constance” Wang, who was the Chief Operating Officer of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, has joined crypto venture firm Sino Global Capital, according to a report from Bloomberg. Wang now leads the gaming division at Sino Global, as confirmed by founder Matthew Graham.
Wang also served as co-CEO of Bahamas-based FTX Digital Markets, where her responsibilities included leading the exchange’s global business expansion, overseeing the listing of tokens, and public relations and marketing.
She was among the senior executives who lived in the luxurious FTX Albany compound with founder Sam Bankman-Fried. Since the November bankruptcy filings of FTX, Alameda Research and the other companies in Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire, she has been living in China, according to an unnamed source quoted by Bloomberg. Wang did not respond to requests for comment on the new position.
Sino Global had very close ties to FTX from the outset, revealing after the firm’s implosion that they had been an early investor in the exchange. In late October 2021, exactly one year before FTX went bankrupt, Sino Global launched the $200 million Liquid Value Fund in partnership with FTX. “From the very beginning, Matthew and the Sino Global Capital team supported the FTX vision and then worked with us to help make it a reality,” Bankman-Fried was quoted as saying at the time.
Wang spent a short time working as a business development manager at Singapore-based crypto exchange Huobi Global, as well as two years as an analyst at Credit Suisse.
The new FTX management team appointed in the wake of the exchange’s collapse sought to subpoena Wang and other former senior executives in January, but she has yet to be accused of wrongdoing by the Justice Department.
On Feb. 28, Nishad Singh, the former Director of Engineering for FTX, pleaded guilty to criminal charges and announced he would be cooperating with prosecutors. Singh joined Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison and FTX cofounder Gary Wang as key witnesses in the Justice Department’s investigation into the firms and their founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, after Ellison and Wang struck plea deals with the DoJ in December.
On June 14, the criminal charges against Bankman-Fried were split into two separate cases after lawyers for the disgraced crypto mogul attempted to have multiple charges dropped due to the fact that they were filed after he had already been extradited to the U.S.
The trial for the original eight charges will begin on October 2, 2023. These charges relate to various wire, derivatives, and securities fraud and conspiracy allegedly carried out at FTX and Alameda Research, along with accusations of money laundering.
A new trial scheduled to begin in March 2024 will focus on the later charges of bribery conspiracy, conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business, bank fraud conspiracy, and derivatives and securities fraud.
