A “substantial amount of assets” of collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX have either been stolen or are missing, an attorney for FTX said on Tuesday at its first hearing in the federal bankruptcy court in Delaware, U.S.

“What we have is a worldwide organization but an organization that was run, effectively as a personal fiefdom of Sam Bankman-Fried,” said James Bromley of law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, who was appointed counsel by new FTX leadership.

“We have witnessed probably one of the most abrupt and difficult collapses in the history of corporate America,” he added.

Bromley’s description of FTX came after the exchange filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Nov. 11. In a bankruptcy filing on Nov. 14, FTX said that it has more than 100,000 creditors and that figure could exceed one million.

A document presented at the hearing showed that the Cayman Islands had the most FTX users, accounting for 22% of the exchange’s global users before bankruptcy proceedings, followed by 11% in the Virgin Islands and 8% in the U.K. Users in the U.S. accounted for 2% of the global total.

(By TIMMY SHEN)