Former CEO of the collapsed FTX crypto exchange Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) has said he is willing to testify before the United States House of Representatives in the wake of his increased media tours.
According to Bankman-Fried, he can appear before the House Committee on Financial Services on December 13, he revealed in a tweet on December 9.
However, SBF noted that he is willing to testify despite having no access to much of his personal and professional data. He cited if he were to testify, his feedback would be insufficient.
“I still do not have access to much of my data — professional or personal. So there is a limit to what I will be able to say, and I won’t be as helpful as I’d like. But as the committee still thinks it would be useful, I am willing to testify on the 13th,” he said.
Pressure on SBF to testify
SBF made the remarks in response to a tweet by U.S. representative and chair of the House Committee on Financial Services, Maxine Waters. According to Waters, following SBF’s recent media tours, he was in a position to testify before the committee and shed light on the happenings at FTX.
“Based on your role as CEO and your media interviews over the past few weeks, it’s clear to us that the information you have thus far is sufficient for testimony,” Waters said.
Notably, SBF had earlier been invited before the committee on December 13 but declined, stating he was still in the process of reviewing what happened in the wake of the collapse.
“Once I have finished learning and reviewing what happened, I would feel like it was my duty to appear before the committee and explain,” he said.
It is worth noting that Bankman-Fried’s media tours triggered the latest invite by the committee in recent days attempting to explain what happened with the exchange in what was termed a liquidity crunch.
With SBF facing allegations of fraud, the FTX founder has maintained his innocence, noting that the matter was beyond his control. In his first-ever audio interview, SBF stated that contrary to the liquidity issues as a trigger for the collapse, FTX was impacted by what he termed as a ‘massive correlation of things during a free market moves.’
