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The government will give documents and evidence to Bankman-Fried’s lawyers in a process known as discovery. Prosecutors said on Tuesday that they have hundreds of thousands of documents with more on the way as they continue gathering evidence. Discovery can take months, particularly if disputes arise over what evidence the defense is entitled to see ahead of trial. Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams has said his office will continue to make announcements as its probe widens. Criminal defendants can change their plea at any time, and their lawyers often negotiate with prosecutors over a possible plea deal.

☆ Final farewell: From Sidney Poitier to Pope Emeritus Benedict a look back at the influential figures who died in 2022
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-01 | by ( Associated Press | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +55 min

Other world leaders who died in 2022 include former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who died in August. The final days of 2022 saw the loss of some exceptionally notable figures, including Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. Here is a roll call of some influential figures who died in 2022 (cause of death cited for younger people, if available):___JANUARY___Dan Reeves, 77. A Cuban-born artist whose radiant color palette and geometric paintings were overlooked for decades before the art world took notice. A prolific character actor best known for playing villains and tough guys in “The Manchurian Candidate,” “Ocean’s Eleven” and other films.

☆ U.S. review could delay or block Binance deal for Voyager Digital
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-30 | by ( Dietrich Knauth | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Dec 30 (Reuters) - Binance's $1 billion acquisition of bankrupt crypto lender Voyager Digital could be delayed or blocked by a U.S. national security review, according to a Friday bankruptcy court filing. The crypto exchange's U.S.-based affiliate Binance.US intends to buy Voyager's crypto lending platform with a bid that includes $20 million in cash and crypto assets that will be used to repay Voyager's customers. Attorneys for Voyager and Binance.US did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday. Binance.US, based in Palo Alto, California, has said that its separate American exchange is "fully independent" of the main Binance platform. Voyager filed for bankruptcy in July, months after the crash of major crypto tokens TerraUSD and Luna sent shockwaves across the digital asset industry.

But in a late Wednesday night court filing, a group of non-U.S. FTX customers who say they are owed $1.9 billion told U.S. Bankruptcy Judge John Dorsey that this case is different. FTX, once led by Sam Bankman-Fried, is also seeking an exception that would keep its customers' names secret. In October, for example, the judge overseeing Celsius Network's bankruptcy ruled that customer names must be revealed, but their addresses and email addresses could be kept secret. He has asked a committee representing all FTX creditors to weigh in. Lawyers for the official FTX creditors committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.

Dec 27 (Reuters) - FTX customers filed a class action lawsuit against the failed crypto exchange and its former top executives including Sam Bankman-Fried on Tuesday, seeking a declaration that the company's holdings of digital assets belong to customers. The proposed class, which wants to represent more than 1 million FTX customers in the United States and abroad, seeks a declaration that traceable customer assets are not FTX property. The customer class also wants the court to find specifically that property held at Alameda that is traceable to customers is not Alameda property, according to the complaint. The lawsuit seeks a declaration from the court that funds held in FTX U.S. accounts for U.S. customers and in FTX Trading accounts for non-U.S. customers or other traceable customer assets are not FTX property. If the court determines it is FTX property, then the customers seek a ruling that they have a priority right to repayment over other creditors.

[1/2] The logo of FTX is seen at the entrance of the FTX Arena in Miami, Florida, U.S., November 12, 2022. FTX declared bankruptcy on Nov. 11, collapsing amid a wave of customer withdrawals. New York-based law firm Sullivan & Cromwell is representing FTX in its Chapter 11 case and guiding its efforts to return assets to customers. Court-approved billing rates for bankruptcy attorneys did not cross the $2,000-per-hour mark until earlier this year, when a U.S. bankruptcy judge approved a $2,035-per-hour fee in the bankruptcy of cosmetics giant Revlon. Before FTX's bankruptcy, Sullivan & Cromwell represented the company in U.S. regulatory inquiries and on potential acquisitions, including its proposed acquisition of bankrupt crypto lender Voyager Digital.

☆ Revlon and key creditors strike deal, April bankruptcy exit
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-19 | by ( Dietrich Knauth | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

Dec 19 (Reuters) - Bankrupt cosmetics giant Revlon Inc on Monday reached a restructuring agreement which would turn over ownership of the company to its lenders and wipe out current shareholders. Revlon now has the support of a faction of critical secured lenders and its unsecured creditors, who had previously been at odds during the company's bankruptcy. The restructuring agreement requires Revlon to get court approval on April 3, which would allow the company to exit bankruptcy on April 17, 2023. Revlon has said it is exploring a sale of the company as a potential exit from Chapter 11. The restructuring agreement allows Revlon to pursue a sale, as long as the offer is high enough to fully repay the Brandco lenders.

Companies Free Speech Systems, Llc FollowDec 19 (Reuters) - Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on Monday asked a judge to allow him to take a $1.3 million annual salary from the bankrupt parent company of his Infowars' website. Jones drew a $1.3 million salary from Free Speech Systems before its bankruptcy, and his attorney asked U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez to restore his salary to that level at a hearing Monday. Free Speech System's monthly revenue has dropped to $1.9 million from pre-bankruptcy levels of $6 million to $7 million, attorneys from the company said, adding that it currently has about $1.8 million in cash. Marty Brimmage, an attorney for the Sandy Hook families, opposed Jones' request for an increased salary. Lopez said he is "open to increasing" Jones' pay but did not have enough evidence to make a ruling yet.

☆ FTX bankruptcy judge to hear media companies' request to reveal customer names
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-16 | by ( Dietrich Knauth | Industry Insight | Saw Law Firms Move Past The Pandemic Into A More Client-Focused Service Environment | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Dec 16 (Reuters) - A group of media companies is set to argue on Friday to the U.S. judge overseeing the FTX bankruptcy that they should be allowed to request that the collapsed crypto exchange make public the names of its customers. In seeking to intervene in the case, the New York Times (NYT.N), Dow Jones, Bloomberg and the Financial Times said bankruptcy law demands transparency. Letting customer names remain secret could turn bankruptcy proceedings into a "farce" if creditors start fighting anonymously over how much money they should get, the media companies wrote in a Delaware bankruptcy court filing. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge John Dorsey said he will not rule on customer privacy issues before January. During Friday's hearing, FTX will also provide an update on its asset recovery efforts and its dispute with the Bahamas-based liquidators.

Dec 15 (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Justice's bankruptcy watchdog on Thursday appointed a committee to represent FTX accountholders and other junior creditors in the collapsed crypto exchange's bankruptcy case. The nine-member committee includes three individual creditors, Genesis affiliate GGC International Ltd, crypto trader Wintermute Asia PTE, Coincident Capital International, Pulsar Global Ltd, Octopus Information Ltd and Wincent Investment Fund. Crypto firms that went bankrupt earlier this year, including Voyager Digital and Celsius Network, have classified most of their customers, particularly those with interest-bearing accounts, as unsecured creditors. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge John Dorsey, who is overseeing FTX's Chapter 11 case, said during a Wednesday court hearing that he expects the creditors' committee to weigh in on issues related to customer privacy at a hearing scheduled in early January. FTX has argued that customer names should be kept secret to protect them from scams and to preserve the business value of FTX's customer list for potential buyers.

THE FIRST TIME Racil Chalhoub, 39, a womenswear designer from Beirut, decided to buy men’s clothing, she was standing in a sea of denim at Abercrombie & Fitch in Los Angeles. This was the early aughts—when many women’s jeans were so snug and low-cut that visible thongs were considered a viable accessory. But Ms. Chalhoub craved loose, roomy hip-huggers. “Everything for women was fitted or flared,” she said. Ms. Chalhoub even launched her own women’s tuxedo brand, Racil, in 2015.

☆ AIG subsidiary files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-14 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Dec 14 (Reuters) - American International Group Inc said on Wednesday its subsidiary, AIG Financial Products (FP), had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection to complete the wind down of a business unit that was a central figure in the 2008 financial crisis. AIG Financial Products largely ceased operations in 2008, and its bankruptcy will not have a material impact on AIG or on life and retirement insurer Corebridge Financial Inc (CRBG.N), which AIG recently spun off, AIG said. AIG Financial Products issued the credit default swaps that put AIG on the hook for billions of dollars in losses during the collapse of subprime mortgage markets, according to court documents filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Delaware. AIG Financial Products has no ongoing operations or employees of its own, but it maintained a small portfolio of financial products after largely shutting down in 2008. It owes more than $37 billion to its parent company AIG on loans related to the 2008 crash, according to court documents.

FTX attorney James Bromley told Dorsey that the Bahamian government has previously obtained information from FTX Digital Market's liquidators and used it to siphon digital assets away from FTX. The Securities Commission of the Bahamas (SCB) has previously disputed FTX's "misstatements" about the Bahamian government's response to FTX's collapse. Chris Shore, an attorney for the Bahamas-based liquidators, told Dorsey that the liquidators were not working at the direction of the Bahamian government. Dorsey began the hearing by asking whether FTX and the Bahamas liquidators could reach a compromise on data sharing before Bromley shot that suggestion down. "Unlike the Chapter 11 process, there is no transparency in the process in the Bahamas," Ray said.

In the first hearing of Jones' bankruptcy in a Houston court, his attorney Vickie Driver said Jones wanted to settle with the Sandy Hook families. They won $1.5 billion in defamation trials over Jones' lies about the 2012 school shooting. David Zensky, an attorney for the Sandy Hook families, said Jones lied for years about the Sandy Hook shooting and concealed information about his companies InfoWars and Free Speech Systems. InfoWars' parent company, Free Speech Systems, which is owned by Jones, filed for bankruptcy in July, before courts in Texas and Connecticut determined the amount of Jones' liability for the Sandy Hook defamation claims. Jones has said that he will appeal the Sandy Hook verdicts if he is unable to reach a settlement in bankruptcy.

Dec 7 (Reuters) - A U.S. bankruptcy judge on Wednesday ruled that some customers of crypto lender Celsius Network should receive their deposits back, giving relief to a relatively small group of customers whose deposits were never commingled with other Celsius funds. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Martin Glenn is weighing broader questions of who owns crypto assets that were deposited with Celsius. Judge Glenn has not yet ruled on ownership of Celsius "earn" accounts or "withhold" accounts. Those regulatory investigations, which alleged that earn accounts were an unregistered securities offering, caused Celsius to create non-interest bearing custody accounts and withhold accounts. When it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July, Celsius reported $4.3 billion in assets and $5.5 billion in liabilities, primarily owed to its customers.

If Celsius deposits are determined to belong to customers, users are far more likely to get their assets returned. Crypto companies typically offer a variety of accounts and they will likely be treated differently in bankruptcy. BlockFi, which is at the beginning of its own bankruptcy case, also offers both interest-bearing and custody accounts. 'WORSE THAN BANKS'Courts will also have to look beyond the user agreements and examine how crypto companies actually handled the deposits, according to bankruptcy specialists. “This is going to have enormous influence on crypto companies and crypto customer behavior."

The loonie was trading 0.2% lower at 1.3455 to the greenback, or 74.32 U.S. cents, after trading in a range of 1.3421 to 1.3520. For the week, it was on track to decline 0.6%. Canada added 10,100 jobs in November, broadly in line with the forecast gain of 5,000, while the jobless rate fell to 5.1%, Statistics Canada said. The U.S. dollar rallied against a basket of major currencies and equity markets globally fell. Canadian government bond yields climbed across the curve, tracking the move in U.S. Treasuries.

☆ Three Arrows Capital says its founders still not cooperating with asset recovery
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-02 | by ( Dietrich Knauth | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Dec 2 (Reuters) - Liquidators for bankrupt crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC) said on Friday that the company's founders are refusing to cooperate with asset recovery efforts, hindering the company's ability to return funds to creditors. Founders Kyle Davies and Su Zhu are more interested in rehabilitating their reputation than helping their own company's creditors, attorney Adam Goldberg said in bankruptcy court in New York. Davies has done interviews recently commenting on the implosion of crypto exchange FTX, attempting to shift blame for Three Arrows' own collapse, Goldberg said. Despite incomplete access to records and accounts, Three Arrows' liquidators have recovered some assets belonging to creditors, including $35 million in U.S. dollars and several different cryptocurrency tokens, liquidator Russell Crumpler said in court. They filed a parallel bankruptcy case in Manhattan to shield Three Arrows' U.S. assets.

☆ Factbox: Crypto companies crash into bankruptcy
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-01 | by ( Dietrich Knauth | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

The price of bitcoin has dropped 65% since the start of the year, the cryptocurrency Luna suffered a total collapse in value, and crypto exchange FTX went from buying Super Bowl ads to crash landing into bankruptcy. Here are the major crypto companies that have gone bankrupt in 2022. BLOCKFICrypto lender BlockFi was the first crypto company to follow FTX into bankruptcy, filing for Chapter 11 about two weeks after FTX's collapse. The proposed sale fell through following FTX's implosion, and Voyager reopened discussions with other potential buyers, including the crypto exchange Binance. Celsius' bankruptcy judge has appointed an examiner to investigate whether Celsius operated as a Ponzi scheme and to broadly review the company's finances.

☆ DOJ watchdog seeks independent review of FTX bankruptcy
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-01 | by ( Dietrich Knauth | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Dec 1 (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Justice's bankruptcy watchdog on Thursday called for an independent investigation into the collapse of crypto exchange FTX, saying customers need a neutral party to investigate allegations of "fraud, dishonesty, incompetence, misconduct, and mismanagement." "The questions at stake here are simply too large and tooimportant to be left to an internal investigation," U.S. Trustee Andrew Vara wrote in court papers. A neutral examiner would also provide more public and transparent findings than an internal review, the U.S. Trustee wrote, which is "especially important because of the wider implications that FTX’s collapse may have for the crypto industry," Vara added.

☆ BlockFi makes first appearance in bankruptcy court
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-29 | by ( Dietrich Knauth | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

Nov 29 (Reuters) - U.S. cryptocurrency lender BlockFi on Tuesday will make its first appearance in U.S. bankruptcy court after filing for Chapter 11 protection on Monday. BlockFi is expected to tell U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Michael Kaplan in Trenton, New Jersey why it went bankrupt and how it plans to exit from Chapter 11. New Jersey-based BlockFi became the first direct casualty of crypto exchange FTX's collapse earlier this month. The company sold a portion of its crypto assets earlier in November to fund its bankruptcy, and it entered bankruptcy with $256.5 million in cash on hand. BlockFi's Chapter 11 plan envisages that BlockFi Wallet customers would be paid back in full and other account holders and creditors would receive a mixture of cryptocurrency, cash, and new equity shares.

☆ BlockFi tells U.S. bankruptcy court it is 'the antithesis of FTX'
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-29 | by ( Dietrich Knauth | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/IllustrationNov 29 (Reuters) - Lawyers for BlockFi, the first direct casualty of crypto exchange FTX's collapse, made their initial appearance in U.S. bankruptcy court on Tuesday, emphasizing that the U.S. cryptocurrency lender was "the antithesis of FTX." Sussberg went to great lengths to distance BlockFi from FTX, saying the company did not face the myriad issues apparently plaguing FTX. Sussberg said BlockFi also intends to seek a court ruling allowing customers in the BlockFi Wallet program to withdraw their funds during the bankruptcy case if they wish. "If it's in your wallet, it stays in your wallet," Sussberg said. Its Chapter 11 plan envisages that BlockFi Wallet customers would be paid back in full and other account holders and creditors would receive a mixture of cryptocurrency, cash, and new equity shares.

New Jersey-based BlockFi, founded by fintech executive-turned-crypto entrepreneur Zac Prince, said in a bankruptcy filing that its substantial exposure to FTX created a liquidity crisis. BlockFi listed its assets and liabilities as being between $1 billion and $10 billion. Renzi said that BlockFi had sold a portion of its crypto assets earlier in November to fund its bankruptcy. In a court filing on Monday, BlockFi listed FTX as its second-largest creditor, with $275 million owed on a loan extended earlier this year. In its bankruptcy filing, BlockFi said it had hired Kirkland & Ellis and Haynes & Boone as bankruptcy counsel.

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New Jersey-based BlockFi, founded by Zac Prince, said in a bankruptcy filing that its substantial exposure to FTX created a liquidity crisis. In a court filing on Monday, BlockFi listed FTX as its second-largest creditor, with $275 million owed on a loan extended earlier this year. Crypto lenders, the de facto banks of the crypto world, boomed during the pandemic, attracting retail customers with double-digit rates in return for their cryptocurrency deposits. Crypto lenders are not required to hold capital or liquidity buffers like traditional lenders and some found themselves exposed when a shortage of collateral forced them - and their customers - to shoulder large losses. In its bankruptcy filing, BlockFi said it had hired Kirkland & Ellis and Haynes & Boone as bankruptcy counsel and Berkeley Research Group as a financial adviser.

☆ Crypto lender BlockFi files for bankruptcy in New Jersey
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-28 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

Nov 28 (Reuters) - U.S. cryptocurrency lender BlockFi said on Monday it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection along with eight affiliates in a New Jersey court, the latest casualty since FTX's collapse earlier this month triggered instability in the crypto market. It listed crypto exchange FTX as its second-largest creditor, with $275 million owed on a loan extended earlier this year. The company's largest creditor is Ankura Trust, a company that represents creditors in stressed situations, and is owed $729 million. BlockFi had earlier paused withdrawals from its platform and acknowledged it had "significant exposure" to FTX and its associated entities. The move comes weeks after FTX filed for U.S. bankruptcy protection and its founder Sam Bankman-Fried resigned as chief executive.

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