Nishad Singh is working on making a deal with federal prosecutors to testify against FTX and Alameda Research founder Sam Bankman-Fried.
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Former FTX head of engineering Nishad Singh is trying to cut a plea deal with federal prosecutors investigating the exchange's collapse.
Singh would become the third senior executive to testify against the crypto exchange's founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, if prosecutors agree to give him a deal, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.
Federal prosecutors have accused the 30-year-old, who was once crypto's highest-profile billionaire, of stealing $10 billion from some one million FTX customers and secretly using it to cover losses at Alameda Research. As much as $8 billion has apparently been lost for good, although the leadership team brought in to run it through bankruptcy has said the firm's books are such a mess that they're not sure where many assets are or what happened to them.
One of a handful of senior FTX executives who lived in a huge luxury penthouse with Bankman-Fried in The Bahamas, Singh was identified by a whistleblower as one of three people who had the authority to make the transfers between the two companies. SBF and Wang were the others, FTX Digital Markets co-CEO Ryan Salame reportedly told Bahamian prosecutors a few days before FTX collapsed.
Bankruptcy filings have alleged Singh was one of several top FTX and Alameda executives who received huge loans from the company — hundreds of millions of dollars in his case. He was also a huge donor to Democratic candidates, giving some $9 million.
Salame reportedly gave tens of millions in political donations to Republicans. Bankman-Fried was known for his huge political donations — he planned to give $100 million in the next presidential election cycle — mostly targeting Democrats.
In one of his pre-arrest interviews, Bankman-Fried said he gave just as much to Republicans as Democrats, but the GOP donations were not publicized.