By
Mayowa Adebajo
April 11th, 2024
Apart from SBF’s parents, two other guarantors for his $250 million bail bond are Stanford executives who claim to have signed the bond in individual capacities.
Disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried is currently out on bail in the United States. To request this bail, SBF’s lawyers submitted a $250 million bail bond.
On Wednesday, February 15, the names of two guarantors for Sam Bankman-Fried were revealed following an unsealing motion from media companies. To ensure SBF’s cooperation with pretrial detention requirements, a total of four guarantors signed the bond. Two of them included his parents.
The names of the other two guarantors are now out in the open. One is Andreas Paepcke who’s a senior research scientist at Stanford University. The other is Larry Kramer, who is president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and dean emeritus at Stanford Law School.
Although their names have been sealed, several media outlets including CNBC have moved to make their identities public. Besides, both of SBF’s parents – Joe Bankman and Barbara Fried – are also the faculty of Stanford. Speaking to CNBC’s Eamon Javers, Larry Kramer said:
“Joe Bankman and Barbara Fried have been close friends of my wife and I since the mid-1990s. During the past two years, while my family faced a harrowing battle with cancer, they have been the truest of friends — bringing food, providing moral support, and frequently stepping in at moment’s notice to help. In turn, we have sought to support them as they face their own crisis.”
However, Kramer said that he’s acting in his personal capacity. He further added he has “no business dealings or interest in this matter other than to help our loyal and steadfast friends”. Kramer had signed a $500,000 unsecured bond. Similarly, Paepcke had also signed the same type of bond for $250,000. Paepcke is a Harvard graduate as well as a Ph.D. in computer science from a school in Germany.
FTX Investor Sues Sequoia Capital
In other news, FTX investors have filed a lawsuit accusing VC giants like Sequoia Capital, Paradigm, and others, of hyping the legitimacy of FTX.
In the proposed class-action lawsuit filed on Tuesday, February 13, the FTX investors noted that the promotion added an “air of legitimacy”. The complaint said that “as a result of defendants’ significant investments in the FTX entities, each was incentivized to leverage their professional reputations and media outreach capabilities to portray FTX as a trustworthy and legitimate crypto exchange”.
Sequoia Capital has written off the entire $214 million worth of investment in FTX soon after the exchange filed for bankruptcy. The VC Giant noted:
“We are in the business of taking risks. Some investments will surprise to the upside, and some will surprise to the downside.”
Other crypto news can be found here.