Following a recent ruling by United States District Judge Lewis Kaplan, the identity of the two people who backed former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried with his $250 million bail bond could be revealed next month.
SBF was released from custody in December after two unknown individuals signed on as sureties for the $250 million bond, which was co-signed by SBF's parents, Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried.
According to the filing, Kaplan allowed a combined petition from eight media outlets to unseal the two persons' identities "for the limited purpose of asserting the public's claimed right of access" to the names.
He did, however, note that there was little weight in support of either side of the debate.
As Kaplan has given SBF's legal counsel until Feb. 7 to dispute the ruling, an unsealing of the guarantors' names is likewise not certain. The deadline would be extended to Feb. 14 in order to allow for the submission of an application for an additional stay since the court indicated that an "appeal is likely" and that "if a notice of appeal from this order is filed by then."
In light of the fact that SBF's parents have already received threats and that the creator of FTX and those connected to him face significant security risks, his attorneys have persisted in making the case that their identities should be kept a secret.
In a letter to Kaplan dated Jan. 12, eight prominent media businesses, including the Financial Times, Bloomberg, and Reuters, demanded public identification of the two individuals responsible for guaranteeing the bond.
Davis Wright Tremaine LLP attorneys representing the media titans argue that "the public's right to know Bankman-guarantors Fried's outweighed their privacy and safety rights."
In his decision, Kaplan stated that he had "no reason" to doubt that threats had happened but had yet to see "evidence to that effect."
Kaplan also claimed that SBF's parents were subjected to extreme scrutiny because of their strong relationship with their son and his father's job at FTX for a year prior to the exchange's demise.
"Thus, the defendant's claim that the non-parental sureties would face similar intrusions is speculative and only entitled to modest weight," he said. "Moreover, the information sought, ie, the names of the bail sureties, traditionally is public information."
Attorneys for the former FTX CEO claimed in a court document dated Jan. 19 that three individuals crashed a car into a metal barrier outside Bankman-parents' Fried's house, where he is currently under house arrest.
According to reports, the unidentified trio managed to leave the area before security personnel could photograph the vehicle's license plate.
