FTX executives used ‘Korean’ account to mask Alameda liabilities, GitHub code shows
- Code snippets on an account with the name of a former FTX executive show comments including “Korea KYC” and “BD expenses accounts”
- The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission has alleged that Alameda shunted debts to an FTX account that wasn’t easily identifiable
A GitHub account bearing the name of former FTX executive Nishad Singh authored code that hid Alameda Research’s ballooning liabilities on the now-collapsed cryptocurrency exchange, according to internal documentation reviewed by Bloomberg News.
The documentation, in the form of comments associated with specific lines of code, offers clues to the origins of a mysterious account on FTX that a regulator alleges helped mask mounting debts of its sister trading firm Alameda Research. The relationship between the two firms, and alleged misuse of FTX customer funds, led to criminal charges against founder Sam Bankman-Fried.
Singh, who was FTX’s engineering director, has not been charged with a crime. GitHub is a programming code repository that companies and individual software developers use to store and share code. GitHub is frequently used to allow developers to work together. It wasn’t immediately clear whether any other FTX employees had access to the account.
The GitHub account bearing his name annotated the code snippets reviewed by Bloomberg with comments including “Korea KYC” and “BD expenses accounts”, the documentation reviewed by Bloomberg News showed.
Alameda shunted debts, which soared to US$8 billion, to an FTX customer account that wasn’t easily identifiable as belonging to Alameda, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission alleged in a civil complaint Tuesday. Bankman-Fried, who founded Alameda and FTX, called it “our Korean friend’s account” and directed it to be created at least partially to mask Alameda’s gaping liabilities, the CFTC alleged.
The so-called Korean account enjoyed the same privileges of Alameda’s main account and subaccounts, including exemptions from parts of FTX’s risk management policies, the lawsuit said.
Singh and representatives for Bankman-Fried and FTX didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Bankman-Fried is being held without bail at a jail in the Bahamas awaiting an extradition hearing in February.