The judge presiding over the criminal charges against Sam
Bankman-Fried restricted him from communicating publicly on Wednesday. The
judge is considering jailing him before the trial over the collapse of FTX
begins for allegations of witness tampering.
This decision was
arrived at after Sam Bankman-Fried reportedly shared
the personal writings of
Caroline Ellison, his former girlfriend and the former Chief Executive Officer
of Alameda Research, with a journalist. According to the prosecutors, by
sharing Ellison’s writings, Bankman-Fried had violated the terms of his bail.
Ellison is a key witness
expected to testify against Bankman-Fried in October when he stands trial.
Alongside two of FTX’s former executives, Gary Wang and Nishad Singh, she has
pleaded guilty to charges of fraud and agreed to corporate with the prosecutors.
Bankman-Fried was
released on a USD $250 million bail last December after being extradited from
the Bahamas, where FTX was based, to face trial in the US. One of the terms of
the bail is that he must be confined in his parents’ home in Palo Alto as he
awaits trial.
Earlier, Judge Lewis
Kaplan issued
a gag order against the
former billionaire and gave his lawyers and the prosecutors until August 3 to
share their opinion about a decision to jail him. Although Bankman-Fried
previously agreed to the order, he asked that the gag order should apply to John
Ray III, the bankruptcy
