FTX debtors file lawsuit against exchange's Bahamian arm on o | Crypto Retro
FTX debtors file lawsuit against exchange's Bahamian arm on ownership of property.
The lawsuit claimed FTX Digital Markets was an "economic nullity" within the FTX Group "created as a front to facilitate a conspiracy to defraud the Debtors’ customers ".
The legal teams representing Alameda Research, FTX US, and FTX Trading have filed a complaint against the Bahamas-based FTX Digital Markets, claiming the company was a “fraudulent enterprise” used as a shell entity to obfuscate the question of the firm's ownership.
In a March 19 filing with the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, FTX debtors said FTX Digital Markets, or FTX DM, as well as the joint provisional liquidators (JPLs) had claimed the Bahamian arm was the “constructive owner” of FTX.com’s fiat and crypto assets as well as other intellectual property. According to the complaint, these “baseless claims” by FTX DM “will harm FTX.com customers and all other creditors of the FTX Debtors” as the company continues with bankruptcy proceedings in the United States.
“The JPLs’ claim to ownership of FTX.com’s property is based largely on constructive, equitable, and other non-documentary arguments that depend upon the false premise that FTX DM was the center of the FTX Group,” said the filing. “Nothing could be further from the truth. FTX DM was no more than a short-lived provider of limited ‘match-making’ services for customer-to-customer transactions, on the cryptocurrency exchange built, owned, and operated by Debtor FTX Trading, its immediate corporate parent.”
The complaint alleged:
“FTX DM was an economic nullity within the FTX Group. FTX DM was a legal nullity as well. The peculiar history of FTX DM is a classic example of abuse of the corporate form. It was created as a front to facilitate a conspiracy to defraud the Debtors’ customers.”
As part of the court filing, the debtors sought a ruling which would assert that FTX DM had “ownership interest” in the property at the center of the bankruptcy case.
