Another witness who testified against Sam Bankman-Fried was Nishad Singh. He recounted his panicky encounters with the boss.
Testimony continues this week in Manhattan court in the case of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried. The turn to speak was for the former head of engineering of that cryptocurrency exchange, Nishad Singh.
Like last week’s testimony, Singh’s came after a plea deal. The engineer pleaded guilty to committing crimes and, in exchange for testifying against his former boss, he could receive benefits.
Recent testimony, especially that of Caroline Ellison, former director of Alameda Research, seems to bury SBF’s hopes. The latter is accused of 7 charges and faces the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison for the FTX case.
Meetings with Sam Bankman-Fried
During his statements, the former executive said that until the meetings with Sam Bankman-Fried he did not have much knowledge of what was happening. He said he started noticing problems after an internal company chat on Signal, which included him, Caroline Ellison, and Gary Wang.
FTX’s high public relations costs were discussed in the chat. Then Singh learned that Alameda had borrowed $13 billion from FTX of users’ money. Upon learning this information, Singh requested a meeting with the chief.
The meeting took place on a company floor in the Bahamas and lasted for just over an hour. In it, the head of the company told Singh that there was no reason to be worried. Likewise, he clarified that, as long as the company continued to grow, the money owed would arrive.
In the story, the former engineering chief said that Sam Bankman-Fried’s attempts to gloss over the situation ended when he told him about the $13 billion loan. He then asked what the deficit was, to which SBF told him that was the wrong question. Instead, it would be better to ask what is being done to fill that gap.
In that same meeting he told him that he would travel through the Middle East and could raise $5 billion or probably more in the coming weeks or months. Other alternatives would be the arrival of more money from investors. SBF told him that the firm would launch new futures products in the United States.
The Second Panic Meeting
After the Middle East trip arrived, Singh requested a new meeting with the CEO. At that point, he expressed that he had the idea of quitting, but instead asked for a real idea of how things were after the trip.
He relates that SBF informed him that it was still possible to obtain an additional $5 billion. However, Singh wanted to know what the plan was to fill the remainder of the $13 billion owed. It was then that Sam Bankman-Fried told him that the main plan is for FTX to remain successful. In that sense, he told Singh that he was one of the main people in charge of making that happen.
The company’s former head of engineering describes that SBF was highly nervous during that meeting. Quoted by CNBC, he comments that he remembers him being angry and with his hands behind him, grinding his teeth frequently.
Singh is one of the main accused in the fraud case and before the deal was facing 6 criminal charges, one less than SBF. He told the jury that he faces a max of 75 years in prison but is “hoping for no jail time.”
By Audy Castaneda
