Before the cryptocurrency exchange, FTX collapsed, it had set up a charity arm called FTX Foundation. The foundation’s website ftxfoundation.org is no longer available.  

During the US House Financial Services Committee hearing on Tuesday (13 Dec), FTX’s new CEO John Ray who replaced the founder Sam Bankman-Fried, told the House that the company had “no record-keeping whatsoever”. It doesn’t even have a proper accounting department.

“This is really just old fashioned embezzlement. This is just taking money from customers and using it for your own purpose,” Mr Ray said. “Sophisticated, perhaps in the way they are hiding something, frankly, right in front of their eyes. This is just plain old embezzlement.”

That being the case, it meant that FTX Foundation could be funded with Bankman-Fried’s embezzled money from FTX customers, since the majority of the foundation’s funding came from Bankman-Fried himself.