Less than two weeks after one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency firms collapsed in the midst of a horrid mismanagement scandal, The Bahamian government is now under severe pressure to defend its record regarding its monitoring of the company.
Crypto firm FTX which had last year set up headquarters in The Bahamas, has left thousands of investors around the world like NFL legend Tom Brady in a financial lurch as, among other issues, it went under in the wake of poor management, lax internal oversight systems and financial inbreeding. Investigators say that managers had illegally moved monies from one affiliate to the next to fund a range of issues including prime real estate purchases in The Bahamas worth more than $100 million. These include, according to Reuters News, at least seven condos in trendy areas in northern Bahamas. Some of the properties were to be used as offices for staff.
Responding to criticisms in the U.S. this week, Bahamian Foreign Minister Fred Mitchell argued that Americans have no right or business attacking The Bahamas for alleged poor oversight of FTX as a string of larger companies had gone under even more scandalously on America’s mainland including Enron, those run by disgraced ponzi scheme player Bernie Madoff and the Charles Keating housing scandal in recent decades. This happened right under the nose of U.S. regulators, he said.
“The securities commission acted with dispatch to freeze the assets, put a liquidator in and secure the…
