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Bankman-Fried's FTX, parents bought Bahamas property worth $121m





The recent collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX has sparked renewed calls for regulation of the sector.


It comes amid fears that contagion could be spreading to other exchanges and the wider crypto market.


Meanwhile, Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX, his parents and senior executives of the failed cryptocurrency exchange bought at least 19 properties worth nearly $121m in the Bahamas over the past two years, official property records show.


Most of FTX's purchases were luxury beachfront homes, including seven condominiums in an expensive resort community called Albany, costing almost $72m.


The deeds show these properties, bought by a unit of FTX, were to be used as "residence for key personnel" of the company. Reuters could not determine who lived in the apartments.


The documents for another home with beach access in Old Fort Bay - a gated community - show Bankman-Fried's parents, Stanford University law professors Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, as signatories.


The property, one of the documents dated June 15 said, is for use as a "vacation home."


When asked by Reuters why the couple decided to buy a vacation home in the Bahamas and how it was paid for - whether in cash, with a mortgage or by a third party such as FTX - a spokesman for the professors said only that Bankman and Fried had been trying to return the property to FTX.


"Since before the bankruptcy proceedings, Mr Bankman and Ms Fried have been seeking to return the deed to the company and are awaiting further instructions," the spokesperson said, declining to elaborate.


It had been known that FTX and its employees bought real estate in the Bahamas, where it established its headquarters in September last year.


But these property records seen by Reuters show for the first time the scale of their buying spree and the intended use of some of the real estate.


FTX, which filed for bankruptcy earlier this month after a rush of customer withdrawals, did not respond to a request for comment. Bankman-Fried did not respond to requests for comment.


Bankman-Fried has told Reuters he lived in a house with nine other colleagues. For his employees, he said FTX provided free meals and an "in-house Uber-like" service around the island.


The collapse of FTX, one of the world's largest crypto currency exchanges, has left an estimated 1 million creditors facing losses totalling billions of dollars.

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