FTX Case: Court Orders to Reveal SBF’s $250M Bail Guarantors’ Names

• US District Judge Lewis Kaplan has ruled to make SBF’s $250 million guarantor’s identity public.
• Kaplan has approved a joint petition from eight media firms that asked to reveal the names of the two people involved in the bail.
• The judge, however, said there was not much weight on both sides of the argument.

The founder of the now-bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried is asked to make his $250 million bail guarantors’ names public. United States District Judge Lewis Kaplan has ruled that bonds could have their identities revealed next month.

As per the case filing, Kaplan has approved a joint petition from eight media firms including Bloomberg, the Financial Times, and Reuters that asked to reveal the names of the two people involved in the bail.

Kaplan believes that the revealing of names would be in accordance with the public’s right to access the identities. Kaplan added that in spite of the ruling, there was not much weight in favor of either side of the argument.

Judge Kaplan said:

The information at issue is entitled only to weak presumption of access, yet the countervailing factors are not sufficiently persuasive to overcome even that presumption.

However, the decision to reveal the names of guarantors is still not confirmed as the judge has given Bankman-Fried’s lawyers time until February 7 to contest the decision.

The judge has ruled that even though the appeal is likely and if a notice of appeal from this order is filed by the given date then he would push the deadline to February 14 to allow for a further stay on the order.

If rumors are to be believed, guarantors include big names including Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary and American billionaire investor Bill Ackman who had defended SBF.