Unlock the Editor’s Digest at no cost
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favorite tales on this weekly e-newsletter.
One of many nice mysteries surrounding collapsed crypto alternate FTX is a step nearer to being solved: where is the other Sam?
We all know the place the primary Sam (Bankman-Fried) is — in Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Middle (reportedly sleeping in the same part of the jail as Diddy), practically twelve months right into a 25-year sentence for fraud.
However the location of Sam Trabucco have been a good larger thriller than why Michael Lewis can’t take criticism.
Let’s refresh our recollections on Trabucco’s position within the FTX mess. You’d be forgiven for having forgotten, since he’s just about disappeared for the reason that Bankman-Fried empire collapsed.
Trabucco labored at Alameda Analysis from the start, sitting in Bankman-Fried’s interior circle. He turned co-chief govt and ran the hedge-fund-cum-venture-capital-firm-cum-private-credit-unit alongside Caroline Ellison, however left the corporate in August 2022 — only a few months earlier than all of it blew up.
In contrast to Ellison, and different key executives together with Gary Wang and Nishad Singh, Trabucco has escaped nearly any scrutiny of his position in FTX’s collapse. He wasn’t arrested, didn’t take the stand in opposition to his former boss and has mentioned nothing publicly concerning the matter.
However because of a submitting made on Monday, we are able to now see what he’s spent a minimum of a few of his time doing: settling privately with US authorities.
“Following in depth, arm’s size negotiations”, Trabucco has agreed at hand over the keys to 2 San Francisco flats price $8.7mn that he purchased in June 2021, in line with paperwork filed at Delaware’s chapter court docket (accessible by way of administrator Kroll’s website, ctrl-F “Trabucco” here).
Trabucco additionally agreed to switch the rights to $70mn price of claims filed in opposition to FTX to the debtors, which embody balances on FTX’s worldwide and US exchanges, and is “together with compensation” that he acquired from Alameda.
He additionally agreed to surrender his 53-foot yacht, ‘Soak My Deck’, which he purchased in March 2022 for $2.51mn. Trabucco seems to nonetheless be in San Francisco from the submitting signature.
In whole, the debtors will obtain from Trabucco “roughly $80mn in worth with out the necessity for doubtlessly pricey and time-consuming litigation”, in line with the doc.
It additionally sheds gentle on Trabucco’s position at Alameda — and his rewards. He was paid $20mn in money throughout his time there, in addition to receiving FTT and SRM tokens, and firm fairness. In a lawsuit additionally launched yesterday, through which the FTX directors are suing Binance, they declare the alternate and its sister buying and selling home “might have been bancrupt from inception and positively have been balance-sheet bancrupt by early 2021 “.
No downside although!
Between July 2020 and October 2021, Trabucco offered a few of his FTT for about $30mn, with the submitting saying that from his wage, withdrawals from his FTX.com accounts and, “different transfers made . . . for his profit”, Trabucco totted up a tasty $40mn.
The acquisition of the yacht factors to extra mixing of enterprise with pleasure, as we now know FTX executives have been wont to do: Trabucco transferred 2.51mn USDC from his FTX account to considered one of Alameda’s FTX accounts, after which Alameda wired the vendor of the yacht $2.51mn, in line with the submitting.
Trabucco has till 26 November to enchantment in opposition to the phrases of the settlement.
In comparison with the destiny of his colleagues, lots of whom shall be consuming jail meals for some time, waving bye-bye to the boat isn’t a foul consequence.
