In short
- Fenwick & West strikes to dismiss lawsuit alleging the regulation agency aided FTX’s multi-billion greenback fraud, arguing it had no information of wrongdoing.
- Agency claims it solely offered “routine and lawful authorized companies” regardless of chapter examiner discovering “exceptionally shut relationships” with FTX management.
- Legal professionals argue plaintiffs are recycling allegations from a dismissed case towards one other FTX advisor, Sullivan & Cromwell, with out proving fraud information.
Former FTX authorized advisors, Fenwick & West have moved to dismiss a lawsuit that alleges the agency performed a key function within the mutli-billion greenback collapse of the trade.
The agency wrote that after two years of litigation, the plaintiffs have but to show that Fenwick & West knew its consumer was committing fraud.
The lawsuit, filed in 2023, names many defendants who traders allege had information of FTX’s fraud. It contains crypto trade Binance, the Federal Deposit Insurance coverage Company, tremendous mannequin Gisele Bundchen and her ex-husband and NFL star Tom Brady, the NBA’s Golden State Warriors, enterprise capital investor Kevin O’Leary, and tennis star Naomi Osaka.
Fenwick is adamant that it’s unnoticed of the fray. The agency didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark from Decrypt.
“Plaintiffs’ core idea is as facile as it’s flawed,” the agency wrote. “Fenwick will not be accountable for aiding and abetting a fraud it knew nothing about, primarily based solely on allegations that Fenwick did what regulation companies do every single day—present routine and lawful authorized companies to their shoppers.”
FTX went bust in 2022 after it turned clear that the crypto trade was utilizing consumer funds, its personal FTT trade token, and Robinhood shares to prop up its sister agency, Alameda Analysis.
The previous couple years have seen FTX founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in jail, former Alameda Analysis CEO Caroline Ellison get a extra lenient 2-year sentence as a part of a plea deal, and billions repaid to the corporate’s collectors.
An impartial FTX chapter examiner reviewed lots of of hundreds of inner FTX paperwork, in the end discovering that Fenwick & West had “exceptionally shut relationships” with FTX management and have become “deeply intertwined” within the agency’s actions.
However the agency argued in its newest movement that the plaintiffs, a gaggle of FTX traders, are making allegations “parroted from a report” on Sullivan & Cromwell, one other regulation agency that suggested FTX.
“However what Plaintiffs don’t clarify is that their allegations towards Fenwick mirror those who that they had earlier pursued fairly aggressively towards Sullivan & Cromwell, however then precipitously dismissed with prejudice,” Fenwick wrote.
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