Dec 27 (Reuters) – Sam Bankman-Fried’s prison case over the collapse of his FTX cryptocurrency trade has been reassigned to a decide lately recognized for dealing with defamation lawsuits in opposition to former U.S. President Donald Trump and a sexual abuse lawsuit in opposition to Britain’s Prince Andrew.
U.S. District Choose Lewis Kaplan replaces his colleague Ronnie Abrams, who recused herself on Friday after studying that the regulation agency Davis Polk & Wardwell, the place her husband is a companion, suggested FTX in 2021.
Identified for his no-nonsense demeanor within the courtroom, Kaplan, a decide since 1994, oversees two civil lawsuits by former Elle journal columnist E. Jean Carroll accusing Trump of defaming her by denying he raped her in a Manhattan division retailer dressing room 27 years in the past.
Trump has sought the dismissal of each lawsuits, together with a battery declare.
Kaplan additionally lately oversaw Virginia Giuffre’s civil lawsuit accusing Prince Andrew of sexually abusing her when she was 17 on the London dwelling of Ghislaine Maxwell, the now-convicted former affiliate of late intercourse offender Jeffrey Epstein. Andrew settled that case in February.
The U.S. Division of Justice accused Bankman-Fried of inflicting billions of {dollars} of losses associated to FTX, as soon as the second-largest cryptocurrency trade, together with through the use of buyer funds to help his Alameda Analysis crypto buying and selling platform.
Bankman-Fried has acknowledged risk-management failures at FTX, however stated he doesn’t imagine he’s criminally accountable for what prosecutors known as a “fraud of epic proportions.”
After being extradited to New York from the Bahamas to face the costs, the 30-year-old Bankman-Fried was launched on Thursday on a $250 million bond, and required to stay underneath detention at his mother and father’ California dwelling. He has not entered a plea.
Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware and Jonathan Stempel in New York; Enhancing by Chizu Nomiyama and David Gregorio
Our Requirements: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
