The chief executive of Skybridge Capital is urging FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried to be more transparent about the exchange platform’s recent collapse.
In a new interview on CNBC Squawk Box, Anthony Scaramucci implores former FTX CEO Bankman-Fried to tell the truth to investors and regulators about exactly what happened to the bankrupt crypto exchange.
The veteran hedge fund manager says he paid a visit to Bankman-Fried in the Bahamas this week and came away from the meeting feeling uneasy.
“When the crisis hit over the weekend, I made a unilateral decision to fly down to the Bahamas on Tuesday in the spirit of helping… The original idea was this is a rescue finance situation and could we somehow help, which would obviously help the entire industry.
And then when I got to the Bahamas, it became clear, at least from some of the people that worked on the legal and compliance team, that perhaps there was more going on than it being a rescue situation. So when I left the Bahamas in the afternoon, I was actually distressed.
I don’t want to call it fraud at this moment because that’s actually a legal term, and none of us know, and we have to leave it up to the regulators, and obviously we have to give everybody a presumption of innocence, but I have to tell you I’m distressed about it. I don’t like it for the industry.”
Scaramucci goes on to plead with Bankman-Fried to stop creating long Twitter threads and come out with the absolute truth.
“I would implore Sam and his family… to tell the truth to their investors, get to the bottom of it, stop 22 tweets, but get themselves in front of a regulator and explain exactly what happened…. And if there was fraud, let’s clean it up to the extent possible and repair the accounts at FTX.”
Scaramucci also says his short-term goal is working on purchasing back the Skybridge Capital equity he sold to FTX Ventures earlier this year. He also notes that Bankman-Fried violated the trust he and other investors put into him.
“For myself, I’ll be working on buying back my equity and restoring that… The bad news is, and I’ll say this very candidly to everybody, I liked and like and trusted Sam and that violation of trust didn’t go just to me, but 20+ venture capitalists, and people around the world that trusted the brand, trusted the technology…
I would recommend to the family members and Sam himself [to] get to a regulator and disclose everything.”
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