To: maceng2 who wrote (193712 ) 11/17/2022 6:52:13 AM From: Haim R. Branisteanu 1 RecommendationRecommended By
Read Replies (2) | Respond to Related to FT article - Sam Bankman-Fried’s fall cuts off big source of funds for US Democrats If the #aml community has found me absent lately, I’ve held back my comments on #ftx and Backman-Fried while I studied and thought it over. I’ve spent my career in both the government and private sector working on some of the biggest money laundering, corruption, and threat finance cases in the world, and frankly, this one terrifies me. The Sam Bankman-Fried/ #ftxcrash is the biggest story in the world right now…one we’ll be hearing about for a long time. The potential #moneylaundering and political #corruption implications flushing out day-by-day, hour-by-hour are nothing short of staggering. The Binance deal gone wrong, the liquidity crunch, $10 billion in customer funds illegally transferred to Alameda Research with $2+ billion missing (and counting) with a Bahamas connection, the SEC breathing down his neck. All this is surface-level corporate collapse. The real story flushing out, and what’s become abundantly clear to the #AML community at large, is that Bankman-Fried used FTX as a “money laundering machine” with deep political ties. There are gravely serious implications for political corruption and coverups. How serious is it? Let’s put it this way - the investigation and subsequent coverage of this case will be a serious test for our democracy. Bankman-Fried’s was the second-largest donor to Democrats overall and in the midterm elections, after George Soros. He had vowed to give up to $1 billion to political candidates. Most of these funds went to the Protect Our Future PAC. Of the 25 congressional democrat candidates he funded through this PAC, 18 have so far won their respective races. Chief among these were Virginia representative Abigail Spanberger and Florida representative-elect Maxwell Frost, who at 25 will be Congress’s first Generation Z member. The FTX founder and the company’s US counterpart FTX.US also gave $3.5mn to the GMI Pac, which in turn transferred approximately $5.8mn to Web3 Forward Pac, a pro-crypto super Pac. Web3 Forward has supported the campaigns of Democrats, including Senator-elect John Fetterman in Pennsylvania and Oregon senator Ron Wyden, who chairs the powerful Senate finance committee. I’m upset about this story. There is no win for the American people here. (A) I fear that it won’t be properly flushed out and made public. (B) I fear that will cause more division and for the American people to lose further trust in their political institutions. I sincerely hope the free press does its job and forces those entities charged with investigating this to do so honestly and transparently. Political corruption, regardless of party, needs to be flushed out apolitically. I fear cover ups suppressing the truth behind this emerging story. This case is also ripe for misinformation. This just scratches the surface. The AML community is not prepared or equipped for this. I’m still holding back what I really think. Remarks has seen a photograph that Mr. Bill Clinton in a public conference sat near
