Four top media firms including
Bloomberg L.P. have rejected the latest move by FTX debtors and creditors to
extend a 90-day redaction window that granted them permission to hide details
of customer-creditors of the bankrupt crypto exchange in
certain filings.
The media giants, which also
includes Dow Jones, The New York Times and The Financial Times, in a court filing today asked the US Bankruptcy Court in Delaware to reject their move and sanction the release of the details of nine million FTX
customers-creditors.
On January 20, the court had given the FTX debtors a 90-day window to redact the names of all customers and the
addresses and email address of customers who are not natural persons. The court
also gave permission to hide the names and addresses of ‘any creditors or
equity holders’ who are natural persons and are protected by the General Data
Protection Regulation (GDPR), the regulation that protects the privacy and personal data of EU citizens.
However, in March, the Ad
Hoc Committee of Non-US Creditors of FTX filed a motion to redact the names of its
members in the certain filings, a proposition the media giants rejected in
April, noting that the request was “substantially
identical” to those initiated by the FTX debtors.
Furthermore, on April 20, FTX
debtors and creditors filed a motion to extend the redaction period for an
additional 90 days. They also asked the court to permanently seal the names of
FTX’s individual customer-creditors in accordance with US and non-US
privacy laws.
However, Bloomberg and the other
media organizations in the court filing argued that the FTX debtors and
creditors provided no evidence to support their argument for redaction. They
also contended that that there is no basis to claim that names of FTX’s customer-creditors
constitute confidential commercial information.
Furthermore, they also maintained that existing record does not establish that disclosing the names of FTX’s
individual customer-creditors will subject them to an “undue risk” of identity
theft or other unlawful injury. Additionally, they claim that
there is no legal basis for hiding the names of FTX’s individual creditors pursuant to foreign data privacy laws.
According to the court filing, the
hearing date for the case is May 17, 2023.
FTX Moves to Recover Assets
FTX, which was founded by Samuel
Bankman-Fried, collapsed in November following a withdrawal frenzy
and discovery of intermingling of funds between the…
