Stanford University to Return $5.5 Million Worth Gifts Received From Bankrupt FTX
Stanford University is in talks with the attorneys for the beleaguered FTX to return the “entirety” of gifts that it received from the bankrupt crypto exchange and related entities.
The move comes after a lawsuit against the parents of its founder and former CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, who allegedly exploited their influence with the FTX “to enrich themselves, directly and indirectly, by millions of dollars.”
Barbara Fried and Joseph Bankman were both tenured Stanford Law School professors. The lawsuit states that Bankman channeled around $5.5 million in gifts to Stanford University from November 2021 to May 2022.
On Tuesday, Bankman and Fried attorneys called the allegations of FTX’s fraudulent transfers “completely false” and “a dangerous attempt to intimidate Joe and Barbara and undermine the jury process just days before their child’s trial begins,” a CNN report notes.
Per a university spokesperson, the school received gifts from the FTX Foundation and FTX-related companies largely for “pandemic-related prevention and research.”
“We have been in discussions with attorneys for the FTX debtors to recover these gifts and we will be returning the funds in their entirety.”
Joseph Bankman’s Stanford profile notes that he gained wide attention for his work on “how government might control the use of tax shelters and has testified before Congress and other legislative bodies on tax compliance problems posed by the cash economy.”
Barbara Fried, on the other hand, is a three-time winner of the John Bingham Hurlbut Award for Excellence in Teaching and has written extensively on questions of distributive justice, in the areas of tax policy, property theory and political theory.
In December 2022, soon after the FTX exchange went bankrupt
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