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The American special envoy to Haiti has resigned in protest at the “inhumane” deportation of hundreds of Haitian migrants back to their country from a camp on the US-Mexican border.

Daniel Foote said that conditions in the Caribbean nation were so bad that US officials were confined to secure compounds because of the danger of armed gangs, and the “collapsed state” could not support the number of returning migrants.

In recent weeks, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere has been hit by the assassination of president Jovenel Moise, gang violence and a major earthquake.

Daniel Foote. Pic: State Department
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Daniel Foote has hit out at the Biden administration. Pic: State Department

Mr Foote claimed the US approach was “flawed” and his resignation follows growing pressure on the Biden administration from fellow Democrats and the UN over the treatment of Haitians in the sprawling impromptu camp near the town of Del Rio, Texas.

Images which showed a US border patrol agent on horseback appearing to use a whip to threaten migrants caused outrage in the White House and from human rights groups.

In both footage and photos, agents were shown confronting migrants near the camp by the Rio Grande river, as they tried to cross the US border from Mexico.

The White House has now said horses will no longer be used by agents at the Del Rio border.

More on Haiti

Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, has also denied reports that the Department of Homeland Security had issued a new contract to operate a migrant facility at Guantanamo for Haitian migrants.

In recent days, the migrants have been crossing back and forth between the Mexican city of Ciudad Acuna and the camp to buy food and water, currently in short supply on the US side.

Haitian migrants flown out of Texas arrive in Port-au-Prince
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Migrants flown out of Texas arrive in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince
Haitian migrants flown out of Texas arrive in Port-au-Prince, Haiti

As many as 14,000 people were at the camp last Saturday. The population has now been cut to less than half that by expulsion flights and detentions.

On Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security said the US has returned 1,401 migrants from the camp to Haiti and taken another 3,206 people into custody.

Career diplomat Mr Foote, who became Haiti envoy in July, said in a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken: “I will not be associated with the United States’ inhumane, counterproductive decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants.

“Our policy approach to Haiti remains deeply flawed, and my policy recommendations have been ignored and dismissed, when not edited to project a narrative different from my own.”

Analysis by Greg Milam, US correspondent

It is the most damning indictment of all for Joe Biden and his handling of the latest crisis on the border that his own special envoy has resigned with a stinging rebuke for the president.

“Inhumane” and “counterproductive” is how Daniel Foote described the Biden administration’s approach to dealing with the crush of thousands of Haitians in a squalid camp on the border in Texas. Deporting people to a country they left a decade ago, now blighted by poverty and violence, he said was “flawed”.

Foote has been accused by the State Department spokesperson of mischaracterising the affair but the noise of squabbling diplomats hardly helps create an impression of an administration that has a grip.

Senior figures within the president’s own party have expressed alarm at the chaos on the border and the apparent lack of a coherent plan to deal with it or the bigger issue of immigration.

The rush of resources to the International Bridge in Del Rio has thinned the numbers camped there and may give the impression of a problem solved but it has simply shifted that problem elsewhere. It happened with the last border surge crisis in Texas and it will happen again. Where and when the next crush will come is the question.

Biden deputed his vice-president, Kamala Harris, to deal with the border but the issue has rapidly become an enduring crisis of his presidency. Telling people to stay away is not working.

The president himself has been largely silent on the issue. The longer he remains so, the greater the chance for his political rivals to portray him as a man without a plan.

For weeks, Mr Foote had been trying to boost US security assistance to Haiti to pave the way for presidential elections.

But commentators said he became increasingly disappointed with the speed of decision-making in the White House.

Haitian migrants in a makeshift camp near Del Rio in Texas. Pic: AP
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Haitian migrants in a makeshift camp near Del Rio in Texas. Pic: AP

A State Department spokesperson said Washington was committed to the long-term wellbeing of Haiti, as well as offering immediate help to returning migrants.

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Sam Bankman-Fried sentence: After years of ‘hubris, incompetence and greed’, crypto king’s jail term is end of an era

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Sam Bankman-Fried sentence: After years of 'hubris, incompetence and greed', crypto king's jail term is end of an era

Sam Bankman-Fried was breathlessly described as a wunderkind – a boy wonder transforming the world of finance.

Renowned for his messy hair and unkempt appearance, he graced the covers of Forbes and Fortune, who pondered whether he could become the next Warren Buffett.

The 32-year-old was the founder of FTX, which had quickly become the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency exchange – a place where investors could buy and sell digital assets like Bitcoin.

Larry David appeared in an advert for FTX during the Super Bowl in 2022
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Larry David appeared in an advert for FTX during the Super Bowl in 2022

Star-studded adverts featuring the tennis player Naomi Osaka and the comedian Larry David added to its allure – with eye-watering sums spent on sponsorship deals.

But in November 2022, Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire came crashing down after it emerged that customer funds worth $10bn (£7.9bn) was missing.

A year later, a jury convicted the fallen entrepreneur of fraud and money laundering after just five hours of deliberations – based on evidence from close colleagues who had turned against him.

Now, “SBF” is beginning a lengthy prison sentence of 25 years for what prosecutors have described as “one of the biggest financial frauds in American history”.

His punishment may be little comfort to five million FTX customers who were suddenly locked out of their accounts as the company entered bankruptcy – and are yet to receive any compensation.

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November: ‘Crypto king’ guilty of fraud

An estimated 80,000 of Bankman-Fried’s victims were based in the UK. Some of them had millions of pounds tied up in the company after entrusting him with their life savings.

While slick marketing campaigns had presented FTX as a safe way to invest in volatile cryptocurrencies, the reality behind the scenes couldn’t have been more different.

Secret back doors had been established that allowed SBF’s other company, Alameda Research, to access money belonging to FTX customers and make risky bets without their knowledge.

Meanwhile, executives were spending lavishly. Private jets ferried Amazon orders from Miami to the firm’s headquarters in the Bahamas, £12m was spent on luxury hotel stays in just nine months, and employees in the US were allowed to order £160 of food deliveries each a day.

The fallout from FTX’s demise also reaches as far as the White House. Bankman-Fried was one of the largest donors to Joe Biden’s campaign in 2020, with the president subsequently facing pressure to return millions of dollars.

Read more:
Who is Sam Bankman-Fried?
SBF ‘wanted to be US president’

Sam Bankman-Fried's colleague and on-off girlfriend Caroline Ellison testified against him. Pic: Reuters
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Sam Bankman-Fried’s colleague and on-off girlfriend Caroline Ellison testified against him. Pic: Reuters

A new chief executive has been tasked with untangling where all the money went. Soon after FTX went under, he said: “Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls.”

Unusually, and thankfully, FTX victims are expected to be compensated in full eventually – kind of.

The payouts they receive will be based on what cryptocurrencies were worth in November 2022. But Bitcoin was trading at £16,000 back then and is now worth £55,500.

Bizarre plans to bring FTX out of bankruptcy and reopen the exchange have also been abandoned.

Other entrepreneurs in this space – who had loyal, cult-like followings and huge profiles – are also facing jail time.

Changpeng Zhao has pleaded guilty to money laundering charges. Reuters
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Changpeng Zhao has pleaded guilty to money laundering charges. Pic: Reuters

Changpeng Zhao, who ran the world’s biggest crypto exchange Binance, sensationally resigned last year after pleading guilty to money laundering violations in the US.

His company had allowed individuals in Syria, Iran and Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine to evade economic sanctions – and allegedly made it easy for terrorists and criminals to move money.

The billionaire faces jail time when he is sentenced next month.

Do Kwon created two cryptocurrencies that spectacularly collapsed in May 2022, with investors losing an estimated $40bn (£31.7bn) in a matter of days.

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He later went on the run but was captured in Montenegro last year after attempting to fly to Dubai using a fake passport.

A civil fraud trial against Kwon and his company Terraform Labs began this week, with prosecutors warning: “Terra was a fraud, a house of cards, and when it collapsed, investors nearly lost everything.”

Do Kwon created two cryptocurrencies that lost tens of billions of dollars - then went on the run. Pic: Reuters
Image:
Do Kwon created two cryptocurrencies that lost tens of billions of dollars – then went on the run. Pic: Reuters

In a way, Bankman-Fried’s sentence marks the end of an era for crypto – when extravagant excesses and a lack of regulatory oversight were the norm.

Bitcoin’s recent gains have been driven by regulated products that allow investors to gain exposure to the cryptocurrency’s price without owning it directly.

And many of these products are offered by established, traditional finance firms like BlackRock, which is the world’s largest asset management company.

A damning report described the rise and fall of FTX as a tale of “hubris, incompetence and greed” – with Bankman-Fried and his inner circle showing little regard for the financial wellbeing of his customers.

Millions of people had their fingers burned, and many will be put off from ever investing in cryptocurrencies again.

But while the industry has learned some lessons, the crypto market’s rapid surge in recent months mean there’s a real risk of another bubble forming – and new bad actors taking advantage of investors looking for a piece of the action.

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Sam Bankman-Fried: Disgraced ‘crypto king’ jailed for 25 years after stealing billions of dollars from FTX customers

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Sam Bankman-Fried: Disgraced 'crypto king' jailed for 25 years after stealing billions of dollars from FTX customers

Disgraced crypto entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried has been sentenced to 25 years in prison after being convicted of stealing billions of dollars from his customers.

He was the chief executive of FTX, which suddenly went bankrupt in November 2022 – leaving millions of users frozen out of their accounts and unable to make withdrawals.

The 32-year-old American could have faced up to 100 years behind bars – but last month, his lawyers argued such a sentence would have been “barbaric” and a five-year term would be more appropriate.

Initial reports said he had been sentenced to 20 years – but this has since been corrected to 25.

Prosecutors had asked the judge to jail Bankman-Fried for 40 to 50 years, arguing the public needed protecting from the fraudster and a harsh punishment would deter other criminals.

“The defendant victimised tens of thousands of people and companies, across several continents, over a period of multiple years,” prosecutors said in a court filing.

“He stole money from customers who entrusted it to him; he lied to investors; he sent fabricated documents to lenders; he pumped millions of dollars in illegal donations into our political system; and he bribed foreign officials. Each of these crimes is worthy of a lengthy sentence.”

More on Ftx

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Prosecutors also said Bankman-Fried had cost customers, investors and lenders over $10bn (£7.9bn) by misappropriating funds to fuel his quest for influence and dominance in the new industry, and had illegally used money from FTX depositors to cover his expenses, which included purchasing luxury properties in the Caribbean, alleged bribes to Chinese officials and private planes.

At the sentencing hearing in Manhattan, Judge Lewis Kaplan said the businessman lied on the witness stand when he insisted he had no knowledge of customer funds being used this way.

The judge also described Bankman-Fried’s claim that victims will be paid back in full as “misleading and logically flawed”.

“A thief who takes his loot to Las Vegas and successfully bets the stolen money is not entitled to a discount on the sentence by using his Las Vegas winnings to pay back what he stole,” Judge Kaplan warned.

Crypto king’s jail term is end of an era

Sam Bankman-Fried was breathlessly described as a wunderkind – a boy wonder transforming the world of finance.

Renowned for his messy hair and unkempt appearance, he graced the covers of Forbes and Fortune, who pondered whether he could become the next Warren Buffett.

The 32-year-old was the founder of FTX, which had quickly become the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency exchange – a place where investors could buy and sell digital assets like Bitcoin.

Star-studded adverts featuring the tennis player Naomi Osaka and the comedian Larry David added to its allure – with eye-watering sums spent on sponsorship deals.

But in November 2022, Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire came crashing down after it emerged that customer funds worth $10bn (£7.9bn) was missing.

Read the full analysis here

The judge said that the sentence reflected “a risk that this man will be in a position to do something very bad in the future”.

“And it’s not a trivial risk at all.”

He added that it was “for the purpose of disabling him to the extent that can appropriately be done for a significant period of time”.

Before he was sentenced, Mr Bankman-Fried apologised in a rambling statement.

FILE PHOTO: Indicted FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried leaves the United States Courthouse in New York City, U.S., July 26, 2023. REUTERS/Amr Alfiky/File Photo
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Sam Bankman-Fried leaving court last July. Pic: Reuters

“A lot of people feel really let down. And they were very let down. And I’m sorry about that. I’m sorry about what happened at every stage,” he said.

“My useful life is probably over. It’s been over for a while now, from before my arrest.”

Judge Kaplan said he would advise the Federal Bureau of Prisons to send him to a medium-security prison or less near the San Francisco area because he’s unlikely to be a physical threat to other inmates or prison staff, and his autism and social awkwardness would make him vulnerable to other inmates in a high-security location.

Read more:
The meteoric rise and even sharper fall of Sam Bankman-Fried

Why industry may never recover from downfall of ‘crypto king’

It took just five-and-a-half hours for a jury in New York to convict him of two counts of fraud and five of conspiracy last November.

Three people from Bankman-Fried’s inner circle – including his former girlfriend Caroline Ellison – pleaded guilty to related crimes and testified at his trial.

Sam Bankman-Fried's colleague and on-off girlfriend Caroline Ellison testified against him. Pic: Reuters
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Sam Bankman-Fried’s colleague and on-off girlfriend Caroline Ellison testified against him. Pic: Reuters

Bankman-Fried’s conviction followed a dramatic fall from grace from his time as chief executive of FTX – the second-largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world at one time – when he was worth billions of dollars on paper.

FTX allowed investors to buy dozens of virtual currencies, from Bitcoin to more obscure ones like Shiba Inu Coin.

FTX logo is seen in this illustration taken March 31, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
Image:
Pic: Reuters

Flush with billions of dollars of investors’ cash, Bankman-Fried rode a crest of success that included a Super Bowl advertisement and celebrity endorsements from stars like quarterback Tom Brady, basketball star Stephen Curry and comedian Larry David.

But after the collapse of cryptocurrency prices in 2022, Bankman-Fried tried to plug the holes in the balance sheet of FTX’s hedge fund affiliate, known as Alameda Research.

Bankman-Fried’s victims – an estimated 80,000 of whom are based in the UK – remain out of pocket, with some losing their life savings.

Prosecutors described his crimes as one of the biggest financial frauds in US history.

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The meteoric rise and even sharper fall of Sam Bankman-Fried

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The meteoric rise and even sharper fall of Sam Bankman-Fried

Sam Bankman-Fried, also known by the initials SBF, has tumbled from crypto king to convicted fraudster.

The founder of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange was found guilty in November of defrauding customers of his cryptocurrency exchange out of billions of dollars.

A Manhattan jury convicted him on all seven counts after a month-long trial.

FTX collapsed last November, shocking financial markets and wiping out the crypto tycoon’s estimated $26bn (£21bn) fortune.

But how did the 31-year-old go from such astronomic financial heights to being sentenced to 25 years in prison?

His early life

Bankman-Fried grew up in California’s wealthy San Francisco Bay area, where he attended a $56,000-a-year school.

Both his parents were professors at the prestigious Stanford Law School.

He studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he lived in a group house called Epsilon Theta, which promotes itself as an alcohol-free community “known for liking beanbags, board games, puzzles, and rubber ducks”.

He once told an FTX podcast he did not apply himself in classes and did not know what to do with his life for most of college.

Bankman-Fried graduated in 2014 with a major in physics and a minor in maths.

Vegan, teetotaller, effective altruist

Bankman-Fried didn’t lose the values of Epsilon Theta after graduation, if what he has told journalists is to be believed.

He pushed back against claims of drug and alcohol use at FTX, telling the New York Times’ DealBook Summit there were no “wild parties” at the company.

“When we had parties, we played board games and, you know, 20% of people would have three-quarters of a beer each or something like that. And you know, the rest of us would not drink anything,” he said.

He is also known for being a vegan – and has stuck to his principles in jail despite not being provided with vegan meals, according to his lawyers.

They said he was “literally subsisting” on bread, water and peanut butter in the run-up to his trial.

His veganism is linked to a history of animal rights activism – which in turn is bound up with the effective altruism movement.

While studying, he was reportedly considering a career in animal welfare, having organised a protest against factory farming in his first year of college.

But he met with Will MacAskill, one of the movement’s leaders, who told him he could make more of an impact by finding a career that paid well, and then donating money to charity.

This is known as “earning to give” and it’s one of the central pillars of effective altruism, a movement that seeks to do good by using resources effectively.

When Bankman-Fried took a job at quantitative trading firm Jane Street after graduating, he said he donated about half of his salary to charities, including animal welfare organisations.

He talked about plans to eventually donate most of the money made in his lifetime, with a focus on “long-termism” or safeguarding the future of humanity.

Read more:
The rise and fall of Sam Bankman-Fried

Does SBF’s arrest mean crypto is fundamentally unsound?

Sam Bankman-Fried, who founded and led FTX until a liquidity crunch forced the cryptocurrency exchange to declare bankruptcy, is escorted out of the Magistrate Court building after his arrest in Nassau, Bahamas December 13, 2022. REUTERS/Dante Carrer REFILE - CORRECTING INFORMATION
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Sam Bankman-Fried after his arrest in the Bahamas

The start of the crypto king

After three years at Jane Street, Bankman-Fried quit with his eye on taking more risks to make more money.

He landed on crypto as the best way of getting rich quickly.

It started with Bitcoin. He realised it was selling for more in Asia than it was in the US – and figured if he could buy it in one place and sell it in another he could turn an easy profit.

“I got involved in crypto without any idea what crypto was,” he told Forbes. “It just seemed like there was a lot of good trading to do.”

In 2017 he co-founded cryptocurrency trading firm Alameda Research, bringing in other recruits from the effective altruism community and reportedly donating half of the company’s profits to charity.

At its peak, the company was moving $25m in Bitcoin each day.

Two years later, he founded FTX, an exchange which allowed users to buy and sell buy cryptocurrencies, and moved to Hong Kong.

The FTX boom

From Hong Kong, operations moved to the tax haven of the Bahamas, where Bankman-Fried bought a multimillion-dollar waterfront penthouse.

The luxury property, overlooking an area used for filming the scene where Daniel Craig famously emerged from the water as James Bond in Casino Royale, was also used as a home office for Bankman-Fried and up to nine of his FTX devotees.

In 2021, Forbes described him as “the richest twentysomething in the world” with a net worth of $22.5bn, putting him at 32 on The Forbes 400 rich list.

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What went wrong for FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried?

Relationship with Caroline Ellison

Bankman-Fried had an on-again, off-again relationship with Caroline Ellison, having met her while working at Jane Street.

He persuaded her to join Alameda Research. As a fellow effective altruist, she was also attracted by the prospect of earning money to give to charity.

The pair lived together in the Bahamas penthouse.

Ellison, who became Alameda’s co-chief executive in 2021 and assumed full control last year, has pleaded guilty to fraud charges and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.

She appeared to have been unhappy at Alameda long before its collapse.

In July, the New York Times published an article citing her personal writings from early 2022, in which she described feeling “unhappy and overwhelmed” at work and “hurt/rejected” by a breakup with Bankman-Fried.

Bankman-Fried was jailed for allegedly sharing the writings with the reporter, with a judge saying it likely amounted to witness tampering.

Political donations

Bankman-Fried was the second-largest individual donor to Joe Biden in the 2020 election cycle.

He was also among the largest donors to Democratic candidates and causes ahead of the November 2022 midterm elections.

Prosecutors said he used $100m in stolen FTX deposits to fund those donations, which he hoped would spur the passage of crypto-friendly legislation.

He was initially charged with conspiring to break US campaign finance laws, but this charge was dropped after The Bahamas said it was not part of its agreement to extradite him.

However, a judge has said the political donations can still be discussed at the trial because they are “intertwined
inextricably” with the fraud charges.

The trial

After he was arrested in the Bahamas in December and extradited to the US, Bankman-Fried was found guilty of seven charges of fraud and conspiracy stemming from the collapse of FTX.

Bankman-Fried – who pleaded not guilty to two counts of fraud and five of conspiracy – clasped his hands together as the verdict was delivered.

He admitted “mistakes” in running FTX when he testified during the month-long trial, but denied stealing at least $10bn of his customers’ money.

Prosecutors claimed he used the funds for risky bets at his hedge fund Alameda Research – with a huge financial black hole emerging when crypto markets fell sharply.

He was sentenced to 25 years in prison on 28 March.

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