U.S. House committee chair says Bankman-Fried must testify next week
4:58 pm Monday, December 05th, 2022
(Reuters) – The chair of the U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee demanded on Monday that Sam Bankman-Fried, founder and former CEO of the now-bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, testify before Congress on Dec. 13.
“It is imperative that you attend our hearing on the 13th, and we are willing to schedule continued hearings if there is more information to be shared later,” Representative Maxine Waters, the committee chair, wrote on Twitter.
On Sunday, Bankman-Fried tweeted that he would testify before the committee after he finished “learning and reviewing” the events that led to the spectacular collapse of his cryptocurrency exchange.
In the tweet Bankman-Fried said he was unsure if that would happen before Dec. 13.
But in her reply on Monday, Waters wrote on Twitter: “Based on your role as CEO and your media interviews over the past few weeks, it’s clear to us that the information you have thus far is sufficient for testimony.”
Bankman-Fried rejected any suggestion of fraud in a series of interviews last week after his company’s collapse stunned investors and left creditors facing losses totaling billions of dollars.
FTX filed for bankruptcy in November after a week in which a possible merger with rival crypto exchange Binance failed.
(Reporting by Akriti Sharma in Bengaluru; Editing by Leslie Adler and Howard Goller)
