The S.B.F. Reckoning Comes Due

S.B.F.
Anything Sam Bankman-Fried does or says before the examiner’s report is released is largely irrelevant and will likely do more damage to his legal predicament. Photo: Craig Barritt/Getty Images
William D. Cohan
December 4, 2022

With all due respect to our friend Andrew Ross Sorkin, who snagged the primo Zoom interview with S.B.F. from the Bahamas on Wednesday, giving the 30-year-old former billionaire yet another opportunity to blither on and on, against the advice of esteemed counsel, the most important event of the week in the ongoing saga occurred the next day, in the bankruptcy court in Delaware. That’s when Andrew Vara, the U.S. bankruptcy trustee for the Delaware region, filed a motion requesting the judge appoint an examiner in the bankruptcy of FTX Trading et al. If Judge John T. Dorsey signs off, and surely he will, we will eventually—probably in four to six months or so—know what really happened here and why.