- Sam Bankman-Fried did not agree to a federal prosecutor’s request to allow a Ukraine-based witness to testify via video conference.
- Prosecutors claimed the FTX customer was unable to testify in person due to the ongoing war in Ukraine.
- The criminal trial against the former FTX CEO is scheduled to begin on Tuesday and last until November.
Former FTX boss Sam Bankman-Fried, who faces fraud charges over the collapse of the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange, walks in Manhattan Federal Court in New York City, USA, on March 30, 2023.
Amanda Perobelli | Portal
Sam Bankman-Fried disagrees with prosecutors’ request to allow a Ukraine-based FTX customer to testify remotely in the criminal trial, which is scheduled to begin on Tuesday.
In a court filing Saturday, prosecutors asked Judge Lewis Kaplan for permission to record testimony via two-way video conference, even though Bankman-Fried’s defense said it “did not agree” to that.
The FTX client in question, which prosecutors refer to in the filing as “FTX Client-1,” is “a young man residing in Ukraine… who lost a significant portion of his savings that he had entrusted to FTX, when he left Russia.” invaded Ukraine in 2022.”
FTX Customer-1 cannot leave Ukraine due to the country’s martial law, which prohibits men deemed fit for combat from leaving the country.
He could try to get special permission from Ukrainian officials to leave the country, but even then, prosecutors estimated the FTX client’s travel time would be about three days in each direction and require a complicated route through an ongoing war would.
A spokesman for the prosecutor’s office declined to comment. Bankman-Fried’s media representative also declined to comment.
Federal prosecutors claimed that testimony from international witnesses was important to understanding the global nature and influence of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange.
“Due to FTX’s international popularity, many of FTX’s customers are scattered throughout the world, making coordinating international approvals to facilitate depositions in the United States and international travel arrangements extremely complicated,” prosecutors said in the court document.
Bankman-Fried is in a New York prison awaiting his trial, which is scheduled to begin in a few days, after a judge revoked his release on bail over alleged witness tampering. According to a court calendar, the trial will last until November 9th.