Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX, Senior Staff, Parents Bought Bahamas Property Worth $300 Million

ndtv.com:

The collapse of FTX has left an estimated 1 million creditors facing losses.

Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX, his parents and senior executives of the failed cryptocurrency exchange bought at least 19 properties worth nearly $121 million in the Bahamas over the past two years, official property records show.

Separately, attorneys for FTX said on Tuesday that one of the company's units spent $300 million in the Bahamas buying homes and vacation properties for its senior staff, and that FTX was run as a "personal fiefdom" of Bankman-Fried. No further details were given.

Most of FTX's purchases registered in the documents seen by Reuters were luxury beachfront homes, including seven condominiums in an expensive resort community called Albany, costing almost $72 million. The deeds show these properties, bought by a unit of FTX, were to be used as "residence for key personnel" of the company. Reuters could not determine who lived in the apartments.

The documents for another home with beach access in Old Fort Bay -- a gated community that was once home to a British colonial fort built in the 1700s to protect against pirates -- show Bankman-Fried's parents, Stanford University law professors Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, as signatories. The property, one of the documents dated June 15 said, is for use as a "vacation home."

When asked by Reuters why the couple decided to buy a vacation home in the Bahamas and how it was paid for -- whether in cash, with a mortgage or by a third party such as FTX -- a spokesman for the professors said only that Bankman and Fried had been trying to return the property to FTX.

"Since before the bankruptcy proceedings, Mr. Bankman and Ms. Fried have been seeking to return the deed to the company and are