The report specifies that the money was raised in October 2021.
Current CEO John Ray has raised doubts about FTX’s financials.
According to the WSJ, FTX’s ex-CEO Sam Bankman-Fried personally pocketed $300 million from the company’s 2021 investment round. A sum of $420 million was raised in this round, giving the platform a healthy financial footing. The report specifies that the money was raised in October 2021 from a large number of investors.
The platform also convinced potential backers that their money would help FTX grow. According to WSJ, in 2021, the crypto tycoon Sam Bankman-Fried made a staggering $300M. Financial documents belonging to FTX were acquired by the media outlet.
The report stated:
“Mr. Bankman-Fried told investors at the time it was a partial reimbursement of money he’d spent to buy out rival Binance’s stake in FTX a few months earlier.”
Financial Mayhem
Adding further proof to the mountain of money that SBF managed to move around. Causing FTX and Alameda Research to go bankrupt. Bankman-Fried acquired around 15% of Binance’s investment in the firm three months before the $420 million fundraising round. SBF paid around $2.1 billion to Binance’s CEO Changpeng Zhao as the first outside investor in FTX.
Current CEO John Ray has raised doubts about FTX’s financials, prompting him to wonder where Bankman-Fried got his money. The report’s findings indicate that the $300 million will likely end up somewhere unexpected. Only the 2021 financial accounts of FTX were audited, and it was noted there that “the money was retained by the company for ‘operational expediency’ on behalf of a ‘related party.’ The WSJ stated that FTX kept getting money in January of 2022. Obtaining a further $400M in funding.