(Adds Bankman-Fried appeal of ruling that bail guarantors be
identified publicly)
By Luc Cohen and Jonathan Stempel
NEW YORK, Feb 7 (Reuters) - A federal judge on Tuesday
rejected a proposal to modify Sam Bankman-Fried's bail
conditions, despite an agreement between the FTX cryptocurrency
exchange founder and prosecutors to address potential witness
tampering concerns.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan did not
provide reasons for the denial, and said a hearing on bail
remains scheduled for Feb. 9.
A spokesman for Bankman-Fried declined to comment. The
office of U.S. Attorney Damian Williams in Manhattan also
declined to comment.
Bankman-Fried, 30, has been free on $250 million bond and
living in Palo Alto, California, with his parents, who
guaranteed the bond, since pleading not guilty to looting
billions of dollars from the now-bankrupt FTX.
On Tuesday afternoon, he formally appealed Kaplan's Jan. 30
ruling granting a request by 11 media outlets including Reuters
to reveal the names of two other people guaranteeing his bail.
Bankman-Fried has said his parents, both Stanford Law School
professors, had been harassed and received physical threats
since FTX's collapse, and there was "serious cause for concern"
the additional guarantors might suffer similar treatment.
Prosecutors had asked last month to tighten bail, citing
Bankman-Fried's efforts to contact both the general counsel of
the FTX U.S. affiliate and new FTX Chief Executive John Ray,
ostensibly to provide assistance.
Their proposed conditions would prevent Bankman-Fried from
talking with most employees of FTX or his Alameda Research hedge
fund without lawyers present, or using encrypted messaging apps
such as Signal.
On Monday, Bankman-Fried's lawyer Mark Cohen said his client
and prosecutors would allow communications with a specific set
of employees, pending Kaplan's approval.
That agreement would also ban Bankman-Fried from using
Signal, but let him communicate by phone, email, text message,
Zoom and FaceTime, as well as WhatsApp if he installed
monitoring technology.
Bankman-Fried would have also withdrawn his objection to a
bail condition preventing him from accessing FTX, Alameda or
cryptocurrency assets.
His lawyers had originally proposed banning contact only
with certain potential witnesses like former Alameda chief
Caroline Ellison and former FTX technology chief Zixiao "Gary"
Wang, who have pleaded guilty to fraud and are cooperating with
prosecutors.
Separately, prosecutors on Tuesday asked another judge to
put on hold Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity
Futures Trading Commission civil lawsuits against Bankman-Fried
until the criminal case ended.
They cited the cases' substantial overlap, and the risk
Bankman-Fried could gather evidence in the civil cases to help
his criminal defense.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen and Jonathan Stempel in New York;
Editing by Daniel Wallis)
Messaging: jon.stempel.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))
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