/biz/ - Business & Finance

>Caroline Ellison is arguably the star witness in the government’s case against Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of the bankrupt crypto exchange FTX who’s on trial for fraud. And what became apparent during her testimony on Tuesday is that, compared with three other key lieutenants who’ve all turned on their former boss, she took similar risks for far smaller rewards.

>Ellison, who testified that she conspired with Bankman-Fried “to commit these crimes,” is the former CEO of Alameda Research, a crypto hedge fund Bankman-Fried also owned. She was given no equity in Alameda and only a half-a-percentage-point stake in FTX. When she broached a conversation with him over receiving equity in the hedge fund, he was “initially receptive” but later told her “it was too complicated.”

>Gary Wang, cofounder and the former CTO of FTX, had a 16% stake in FTX and a 10% stake in Alameda. Nishad Singh, former director of engineering at FTX, owned 5% of the company, according to Michael Lewis’s recent SBF tell-all. And Bankman-Fried owned the lion’s share—90% of Alameda and more than half of FTX, per Lewis.

>Moreover, while the three siphoned billions of dollars in personal loans out of Alameda—what prosecutor Danielle Sasson called “loans to insiders”—Ellison took out a comparatively minuscule $1.3 million to invest in a startup, she said on Tuesday. Even Ryan Salame, co-chief of FTX’s Bahamas subsidiary whom past witnesses don’t usually cite as part of the FTX inner circle, took out $35 million to donate to Republican political campaigns.