Former FTX US president accuses Bankman-Fried of pressure and manipulation

Former FTX US head Brett Harrison accused the founder of the parent exchange Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) of “gaslighting and manipulation” during their interactions during the development of the U.S. subsidiary.

26/49 Sam was uncomfortable with conflict. He responded at times with dysregulated hostility, at times with gaslighting and manipulation, but ultimately chose to isolate me from communication on key decision-making.

— Brett Harrison (@BrettHarrison88) January 14, 2023

According to him, the ensuing conflict over the American subsidiary’s dependence on the parent company also led to unregulated hostility from Bankman-Fried and ultimately to the de facto removal of the former head of FTX US from key decision-making.

The disagreements arose in Harrison’s sixth month on the job, when he began to push firmly for independence for the division’s executive, legal and development teams, with which SBF disagreed.

The founder of the exchange turned out to be “stubborn and hostile” in a situation where his authority was challenged, the top executive added.

He and other key staff of the subsidiary — seasoned specialists from financial, legal firms and regulated exchanges — faced “enormous pressure”, their professional experience “had become useless and irrelevant”.

Harrison said that he initially felt sympathy for such leadership, seeing in this “dependence and mental health issues” of SBF as a possible factor.

The view was based on their relationship at Jane Street, where Bankman-Fried was regarded as “promising” and known as “a sensitive and intellectually curious person.”

“I saw his total insecurity and rigidity when his decisions were questioned, his hostility and temperament volatility. I realised he was not the man I remembered,” said the former top executive.

In 11 of his 17 months with FTX US, Harrison threatened to leave the company if organizational problems were not resolved. In response, he received “threats of dismissal and damage to his professional reputation” issued on behalf of Bankman-Fried. This only reinforced Harrison’s decision to depart the firm some time later, so as not to harm it.

Another source of disagreement concerned delegating managerial responsibility and oversight, which SBF and other Bahamas-based executives handled.

Harrison noted that he sought to make more transparent the software development duties with co-founder Gary Wang and chief programmer Nishad Singh. The first became a defendant in a fraud case alongside Bankman-Fried. The latter was not charged with wrongdoing.

“I could never have imagined that at the heart of the problems I had seen in other, more mature firms over my career, and which I believed were not fatal to the business’s success, lay multibillion-dollar fraud. From what has been made public, it is clear that this scheme was tightly controlled by Sam and his inner circle at FTX and Alameda, of which I was not a part, like other FTX US leaders,” the expert stressed.

Former Brett Harrisonannounced his resignation on September 27, 2022.

On December 13, Bankman-Fried arrested in the Bahamas. Later he extradited to the United States, where was released on bail in the amount of $250 million.

As part of the investigation into the FTX collapse the American prosecutor charged him with eight criminal offenses. SBF pleaded not guilty, with the trial scheduled for October.

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