NEW YORK, Feb 13 (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Monday put
two regulators' civil lawsuits against Sam Bankman-Fried on hold
until the conclusion of the Department of Justice's criminal
case against the founder of the now-bankrupt FTX cryptocurrency
exchange.
U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel in Manhattan granted a
Justice Department motion to stay the lawsuits filed by the
Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures
Trading Commission.
Prosecutors said it made sense to delay those lawsuits
because the cases substantially overlapped, and the outcome of
the criminal case would likely affect what issues remained in
the civil cases.
They also cited the risk that Bankman-Fried could gather
evidence in the civil cases to improperly impeach government
witnesses, circumvent discovery rules in criminal cases, and
tailor his criminal defense.
Bankman-Fried consented to putting the civil cases on hold.
Stays of SEC and CFTC lawsuits are common when the Justice
Department files parallel criminal cases.
Bankman-Fried, 30, has been free on $250 million bond and
living in Palo Alto, California, with his parents since pleading
not guilty to looting billions of dollars from FTX. Another
Manhattan federal judge, Lewis Kaplan, oversees that case.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York, editing by Deepa
Babington)
Messaging: jon.stempel.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))
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