When the cryptocurrency exchange FTX went bankrupt, oil tycoon and Belfer family patriarch Robert Belfer lost a lot of money. This occurred long after he had suffered financial losses in the collapses of Enron and Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.
In a recent article, Financial Times reported that a list of FTX’s stockholders included investment funds with links to the Belfer family, as evidenced by court filings. Sam Bankman-Fried, 30, runs the fictitious digital asset firm FTX. At the beginning of the year, family-affiliated investment firms Belfer Investment Partners and Lime Partners possessed a combined total of $34.5 million in company shares.
Robert and Renée Belfer are two of New York City’s most philanthropic residents, having donated significant money to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Belfer Center for the Study of International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School and the Greek and Roman Galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art are named for the family. Arthur Belfer, the father of Robert Belfer, emigrated to the United States from Poland shortly after the Nazi invasion. Before the foam rubber and oil goods arrived, he introduced feathers for use in pillows and sleeping bags.
In time, Belco Petroleum Corporation joined the ranks of the Fortune 500 and was acquired by an organization, not unlike Enron. With this, the Belfers were able to gain ownership of the business. From 1997 until 2002, Robert Belfer served on the Enron board of directors. The Beavers lost roughly $2 billion when the firm went bankrupt five years later.
The family was fortunate to withdraw $28 million from Bernie Madoff’s investment business after their fortune had fallen to around $110 million. Soon after the stock market meltdown of 2008, the late financier started his Ponzi scheme. According to a story in the New York Post, trustee Irving Picard, responsible for recovering funds for Madoff victims, sued the family to recover investments for other victims. What exactly will occur in court is still up in the air.
Earlier this month, Bankman-Fried entered a not-guilty plea to eight charges, including wire fraud and securities fraud conspiracy. His alleged wrongdoings have been likened to Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, and he has been charged with both. For participating in advertising and publicly promoting FTX, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen, ex-wife of supermodel Gisele Bündchen, received a combination of stock and bitcoins. They are being sued because they allegedly participated in a “fraudulent scheme” that preyed on people with little financial expertise.
FTX customers learned that their assets were intertwined with Alameda Research, a trading business owned by Bankman’s ex-lover. Fry’s had as much as $8 billion deposits from individual and institutional customers. Bankman-Fried enlisted your assistance in his attempt to sell this money to investors. When asked by parliamentarians about the unprecedented “total breakdown of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information,” the bankruptcy attorney appointed to handle the FTX bankruptcy proceedings, John Ray III, said he had never seen anything like it.
Executives like Bankman-Fried had already spent lavishly on tropical real estate and campaign donations to Democrats. An estimated $5 billion in assets have been located by lawyers working to reimburse victims of financial fraud.