By Phoebe Williams
Sam Bankman-Fried took the witness stand to testify in his own defence today at his fraud trial in New York on charges of looting billions of dollars in customer funds from his now-bankrupt FTX cryptocurrency exchange.
His testimony is set to mark the first time the 12 jurors and five alternates are hearing directly from the 31-year-old former billionaire after 12 trial days.
Bankman-Fried started testifying on Thursday at a hearing outside the jury’s presence.
US District Judge Lewis Kaplan asked him to preview his testimony about the involvement of lawyers in key decisions at the heart of the case so he could decide whether it was admissible as evidence.
Prosecutors accuse Bankman-Fried of using FTX customer funds to prop up his crypto-focused hedge fund, Alameda Research, make speculative venture investments and donate more than $100m to US political campaigns.
He also faces charges of scheming to cheat Alameda’s lenders and FTX investors.
Bankman-Fried’s trial, which began on October 3, is drawing to a close — nearly a year after FTX collapsed amid a wave of customer withdrawals.
The company declared bankruptcy in November 2022 and Bankman-Fried was indicted the following month.
Bankman-Fried said he believed Alameda was permitted to borrow from FTX in certain circumstances but pushed back against the idea that he was using customer assets for his own purposes.
“That is not what I viewed to be happening so that is certainly not how I discussed it with attorneys,” he said when asked whether he had discussed using FTX customer assets to buy rival exchange Binance’s stake in FTX.
