NEW PROVIDENCE, BahamasOfficial property records show that Sam Bankman-FTX, Fried’s parents, and senior executives of the failed cryptocurrency exchange bought at least 19 properties in the Bahamas worth nearly $121 million over the past two years.
Most of what FTX bought were expensive homes on the beach, including seven condos in an expensive resort community called Albany that cost almost $72 million. The deeds show that FTX bought these properties so that “key personnel” of the company could live there. The people who lived in the apartments could not be found by Reuters.
Fried’s parents, both Stanford University law professors, signed the papers for another beachfront home in Old Fort Bay, a gated community that was once home to a British colonial fort built in the 1700s to protect against pirates. One of the documents from June 15 said that the property would be used as a “vacation home.”
Related: FTX is trying to get $9.4 billion in rescue funds, and the Bahamas has frozen some of its assets.
Reuters asked a spokesman for the professors why they bought a vacation home in the Bahamas and how they paid for it. The spokesman said that Bankman and Fried were trying to give the property back to FTX.
“Since before the bankruptcy proceedings, Mr. Bankman and Ms. Fried have been trying to give the deed back to the company and are waiting for further instructions,” the spokesperson said, declining to say more.
Even though it was already known that FTX and its employees bought real estate in the Bahamas, where the company’s headquarters opened in September last year, property records seen by Reuters show for the first time how much they bought and what they plan to do with some of it.
After a rush of customer withdrawals earlier this month, FTX filed for bankruptcy. When asked for a comment, the company did not answer. Bankman-Fried did not answer questions about what she thought.
Bankman-Fried told Reuters that he lived with nine other people from work. He said that FTX gave its employees free meals and an “Uber-like” service to get around the island.
One of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchanges, FTX, went bankrupt. This means that about a million creditors will lose billions of dollars because of it. Reuters said that Bankman-Fried secretly used at least $1 billion of his customers’ deposits to keep his trading business going.
In a U.S. court filing with the District of Delaware bankruptcy court earlier this month, John Ray, the new CEO of FTX, said that he thought corporate funds of the FTX Group were used to “buy homes and other personal items for employees and advisors.”
Reuters couldn’t find out where FTX and its executives got the money to buy these properties.
PROPERTY PURCHASES
Reuters looked for FTX, Bankman-Fried, his parents, and some of the company’s top executives in the property records at the Bahamas Registrar General’s Department.
In 2021 and 2022, FTX Property Holdings Ltd., a part of FTX, bought 15 properties worth nearly $100 million.
Its most expensive purchase was a $30 million penthouse at The Albany, a resort where Tiger Woods holds a golf tournament every year. The property records for the penthouse, which were signed by the president of FTX Property, Ryan Salame, on March 17, showed that it was meant to be a “residence for key personnel.”
Salame did not respond to a request for comment.
Three condos at One Cable Beach in New Providence, which is right on the beach, are also high-end purchases. Records showed that Nishad Singh, the former head of engineering at FTX, Gary Wang, an FTX co-founder, and Bankman-Fried bought the condos for between $950,000 and $2 million to live in.
When asked for comments, Singh and Wang did not answer.
Two of FTX Property’s properties were meant to be used for business: a group of houses worth $8.55 million that served as FTX’s headquarters and a 4.95-acre plot of land on the coast with a view of blue water that was also supposed to be turned into office space for the crypto exchange.
The FTX headquarters is now empty, and some windows have furniture pushed up against them. Its signs have been taken down. The 4.5-million-dollar plot of land is also empty.
Related: Bankman-Fried of Special Report-FTX pleaded for help even as he exposed massive accounting flaws.
A security guard said that people who left the headquarters earlier this month did not come back.
