Bloomberg: Caroline Ellison hires former SEC official to defend her interests

Former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission official SEC Stephanie Avakian has agreed to represent the interests of former Alameda Research head Caroline Ellison in the federal investigation into the FTX collapse. Bloomberg reports.

At the Commission, Avakian led the enforcement division and oversaw cases involving cryptocurrency projects, including Ripple and Robinhood. In 2020, she reported a record amount of penalties for unregistered ICOs — over $4.68 billion.

She is currently at WilmerHale. According to информации on the site, she counsels and defends public companies, investment banks, asset managers and individual executives in the course of government investigations.

According to Bloomberg, WilmerHale lawyers will provide additional legal support to Ellison.

On November 6, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said he aimed to divest from the FTX utility token (FTT). The assets, together with BUSD, totaling about $2.1 billion, marked the companys exit from its portfolio investment in the platform.

That same day Ellison said she was willing to buy back FTT from Binance at $22 per unit. By November 11, FTX Group, which includes Alameda Research, filed for bankruptcy. Sam Bankman-Fried stepped down as CEO.

John Ray, who took the post, accused former exchange executives of concealing illicit use of customer funds and a “secret release of Alameda Research from certain aspects of the platform’s auto-liquidation protocol”.

In November, a Canadian resident filed a lawsuit against Bankman-Fried, Ellison and the NBA’s Golden State Warriors for false advertising.

Lawyers say the U.S. Department of Justice has all the necessary grounds to bring criminal charges against the exchange’s top executives. The agency urged the bankruptcy court to investigate potential fraud.

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