FTX spent $40M on food, flights, and hotels in just 9 months: Court filings

FTX’s Bahamian institution spent a staggering magnitude of wealth connected luxury hotels and accommodation, flights, and nutrient conscionable 9 months earlier the exchange’s collapse, tribunal filings revealed. 

In bankruptcy tribunal documents reviewed by Business Insider, FTX Digital Markets went done $40 cardinal betwixt January to September 2022, conscionable 2 months earlier the institution filed for bankruptcy citing liquidity issues.

More than $15 cardinal went connected luxury hotels and accommodation, with $5.8 cardinal of that astatine 1 edifice — the Albany Hotel. This luxury edifice is wherever Sam Bankman-Fried lived successful his $30 cardinal penthouse until his arrest, the report added.

Around $3.6 cardinal went connected the Grand Hyatt, a four-star edifice that hosted British royalty successful March 2022. There was besides $800,000 spent astatine the five-star Rosewood resort.

Furthermore, astir $7 cardinal was spent connected meals and amusement with astir fractional of that going connected catering services, according to the documents. Nearly $4 cardinal was spent connected flights and implicit $500,000 was spent connected postage and delivery.

FTX adjacent made a backstage woody with an aerial bearer to alert their Amazon orders from a Miami depot since the e-commerce elephantine didn’t present to the Bahamas, according to London’s Financial Times.

The FT added that the steadfast besides provided Bahamas unit with a “full suite of cars and state covered for each employees [and] unlimited, afloat disbursal covered trips to immoderate bureau globally.”

In Dec. 2022, a erstwhile employee revealed the extent of the company’s excessive luxury expenditures saying it was “cult-like.” “The full cognition was iconically and moronically inefficient,” she said astatine the time.

Related: US authorities motorboat leafage to notify FTX’s alleged victims astir SBF’s case

FTX besides made galore donations to section charities and organizations successful the Bahamas.

There has been speculation that immoderate of these donations whitethorn person to beryllium returned arsenic the Caribbean land federation tries to determination on, according to a Jan. 8 report successful section media.

Bankman-Fried entered a plea of not guilty to 8 transgression charges successful the U.S. District Court successful the Southern District of New York connected Jan. 3.