On October 9, the assistant attorney of prosecutors, Thane Rehn, filed a motion requesting Judge Lewis A. Kaplan to prevent Bankman-Fried from bringing up Anthropic during his trial.
Anthropic is an AI company in which Bankman-Fried is an investor. As per the recent media reports, the company will receive billions in funding from Google, just weeks after announcing a similar investment from Amazon, which has led to widespread positiveness among FTX creditors for a significant financial recovery.
Rehn noted an earlier circumstance in which Jude Kalpan ruled, “It is immaterial as a matter of law whether the defendant [Bankman-Fried] intended to repay the misappropriated funds,” and pleaded in his filing that “such evidence would therefore be wholly irrelevant, and present a substantial danger of unfair prejudice, confusing the issues, misleading the jury, undue delay, and waste of time.”
Rehen added that venture capital investments are speculative and gave a familiar example. As per the filing, FTX has raised similar venture investments at a valuation of around $18 billion in 2021 and $32 billion in 2022, but FTX shares are worth nothing today.
The defense has not filed any response. Gary Wang, an Alameda Research and FTX co-founder, will be cross-examined and Caroline Ellison, a former CEO of Alameda Research, might give her first testimony in the SBF trial on Tuesday.
Also Read: Wang Unfolds SBF’s Comingling Of Funds From FTX & Alameda
