FTX CEO John J. Ray III said he is investigating the role played by founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s parents in the company’s collapse.
During testimony in front of the House Financial Services Committee on the collapse of FTX, Ray was questioned by Michigan Republican Rep. Bill Huizenga about the involvement of Bankman-Fried’s parents in FTX operations.
FTX CEO John J. Ray III said he’s investigating Sam Bankman-Fried’s parents’ role in the company, citing “the family did receive payments” https://t.co/IWsMVAzRqX pic.twitter.com/9GtiD3M10Y
— Bloomberg (@business) December 13, 2022
Ray said “we are investigating” the role the family played and “Mr. Bankman had given legal advice. He received payments.. the family certainly received payments,” National Review reported. Ray is a lawyer who specializes in restructuring companies and previously served as Enron CEO during the company’s bankruptcy, according to the New York Times.
Bankman-Fried’s father Joseph Bankman is a law professor at Stanford University Law School, specializing in tax law. He has testified in front of Congress numerous times on tax avoidance by hedge funds and other entities. (RELATED: FTX’s ‘Unsophisticated’ Leaders Blew Billions Of Customer Funds On ‘Spending Binge’ For Overpriced Assets, CEO Says)
His mother Barbara Fried is a Democratic political operative who founded Super PAC Mind The Gap and a professor at Stanford Law. Neither of Bankman-Fried’s parents will be teaching at Stanford next year, a campus paper reported.
Mind the Gap emerged as a “power center in the Silicon Valley political scene” and “operates in a cone of secrecy” according to a 202o Vox expose. The group raised more than $20 million in the 2018 midterm elections and donors included former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, Vox reported.
Watchdog group Influence Watch explained “the PAC created a statistical model which attempted to score the impact each dollar donated would have on Democrats winning back control of the House of Representatives.”
The group instructed donors in a memo to “keep their donations and the names of the organizations secret to avoid detection by Republicans,” according to Influence Watch.
Bankman-Fried’s parents were known to be obsessed with ethics and participated in high minded philosophical conversations with other academics, Puck News reported.