FTX fraud: Indian-origin Nishad Singh pleads guilty to criminal charges
Darpan News Desk IANS, 01 Mar, 2023 01:18 PM
San Francisco, March 1 (IANS) Indian-origin Nishad Singh, the former director of engineering at collapsed crypto exchange FTX, has finally pleaded guilty to criminal charges and was currently cooperating with the US prosecutors in the alleged billion-dollar scam at the crypto trading platform run by former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried who is also facing a trial.
Singh pleaded guilty to six conspiracy charges, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to violate federal campaign finance laws.
Bankman-Fried, along with Gary Wang, co-founder of FTX, and Caroline Ellison, the former head of FTX's sister hedge fund Alameda Research, have all pleaded guilty in the ongoing case.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged Singh for his role in a multi-year scheme to defraud equity investors in FTX.
According to the SEC's complaint, Singh created software code that allowed FTX customer funds to be diverted to Alameda Research, a crypto hedge fund owned by Bankman-Fried and Wang, despite false assurances by Bankman-Fried to investors that FTX was a safe crypto asset trading platform.
The complaint alleged that Singh knew or should have known that such statements were false and misleading.
"We allege that this was fraud, pure and simple: while on the one hand FTX touted its supposed effective risk mitigation measures to investors, on the other Singh and his co-defendants were stealing customer funds using software code Singh helped create," said Gurbir S. Grewal, Director of the SEC's Division of Enforcement.
The complaint also alleged that Singh was an active participant in the scheme to deceive FTX's investors.
Moreover, according to the complaint, as FTX neared collapse, Singh withdrew approximately $6 million from FTX for personal use and expenditures, including the purchase of a multi-million dollar house and donations to charitable causes.
In a parallel action, the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) also announced charges against Singh.
"Today's guilty plea underscores once again that the crimes at FTX were vast in scope and consequence," said Damian Williams, US attorney for the Southern District of New York.
The Madhya Pradesh government said on Friday that 46 students from the state who registered with the Chief Minister's helpline are safe in Ukraine. However, it is not known exactly how many students from the state are stranded in the war-hit country.
The announcement came shortly after President Vladimir Putin authorised a "special military operation" in the conflict-hit Donbas region in eastern Ukraine. Flights to Kiev, Dnepr, Lvov and Odessa airports "are restricted due to potential hazard for civil aviation
The United Nations refugee agency said on Thursday that the situation was quickly deteriorating after Russia's invasion. It appealed to neighbouring countries to keep their borders open to people seeking a safe haven.
There are an estimated 25,000 Indian students in Ukraine alone who are pursuing medicine, engineering, and science courses. More than 2,500 students from Tamil Nadu are estimated to be studying in Ukraine.
The Foreign Secretary stated that External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar has spoken to his Polish, Romanian, Hungarian, and Slovakian counterparts for setting up a camp at border areas for evacuation of stranded Indian nationals. He also stated that flight options are available through Dubai and Istanbul and that the Indian Embassy continues to be operational in Ukraine.
The Ministry of External Affairs in touch with all the neighbouring countries surrounding Ukraine to even evacuate Indian citizens. Many citizens who were to fly back to India were left at the airport after closure of Ukrainian airspace following Russia's Vladimir Putin announcement of a military operation in Ukraine.
