SEC confirms years-long director bans for former Alameda, FTX executives

Cointelegraph

Former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison and former FTX executives Gary Wang and Nishad Singh will be barred from assuming company leadership roles for eight to 10 years following a court judgment.In a Friday notice, the US Securities and Exchange Commission said that it had obtained final consent judgments against Ellison, Wang and Singh for their roles in the misuse of investor funds at FTX from 2019 to 2022. The former Alameda CEO consented to a 10-year officer-and-director bar, while Wang and Singh consented to eight-year officer-and-director bars each. All three are also subject to five-year ”conduct-based injunctions,” according to the SEC.“In reality, as alleged in the complaints, [Sam] Bankman-Fried, Wang, and Singh, with Ellison’s knowledge and consent, had exempted Alameda from the risk mitigation measures and provided Alameda with a virtually unlimited ‘line of credit’ funded by FTX’s customers,” said the SEC. “The complaints also alleged that Wang and Singh created FTX’s software code that allowed FTX customer funds to be diverted to Alameda, and that Ellison used misappropriated FTX customer funds for Alameda’s trading activity.” Former FTX CEO Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried received a 25-year sentence for his role in the exchange’s collapse. He is awaiting the results of an appeal in the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, where a hearing was held on Nov. 4.Ellison was sentenced to two years as part of a plea deal in which she testified against Bankman-Fried. Wang and Singh testified against SBF at his criminal trial and were sentenced to time served in 2024.Ellison will soon be released from custodyThe former Alameda CEO, who largely stayed out of the public spotlight between FTX’s collapse and her testimony at SBF’s trial in October 2023, was recently transferred from prison to a Residential Reentry Management field office in New York City. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, she is scheduled to be released on Feb. 20, about nine months before the end of her two-year sentence. The timing suggested she may have been eligible for good-conduct credits to reduce her prison time.Magazine: When privacy and AML laws conflict: Crypto projects’ impossible choice