Dec 27 (Reuters) – Sam Bankman-Fried’s legal case over the collapse of his FTX cryptocurrency alternate has been reassigned to a decide just lately recognized for dealing with defamation lawsuits towards former U.S. President Donald Trump and a sexual abuse lawsuit towards 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 associate, 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 just lately oversaw Virginia Giuffre’s civil lawsuit accusing Prince Andrew of sexually abusing her when she was 17 on the London house 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 alternate, together with by utilizing buyer funds to assist 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 responsible for what prosecutors referred to 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 dad and mom’ California house. 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
: .