Tausi Insider

Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder and former CEO of crypto currency exchange FTX, is escorted out of the Magistrate Court building in Nassau, Bahamas, on Dec. 21. DANTE CARRER/Reuters Sam Bankman-Fried was released on a US$250-million bond package on Thursday while he awaits trial on fraud charges related to the collapse of the FTX crypto exchange. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have accused him of stealing billions of dollars in FTX customer funds to plug losses at his hedge fund, Alameda Research. Mr. Bankman-Fried was not asked to enter a plea on Thursday. He has previously acknowledged risk-management failures at FTX, but has said he does not believe he has criminal liability. His defence lawyer, Mark Cohen, declined to comment after the hearing in Manhattan federal court. After the hearing, the one-time billionaire was surrounded by photographers as he exited the Lower Manhattan courthouse and entered a black SUV. He sported facial stubble and a grey suit – a far cry for the shor...

One out of 10 public companies in the United States is committing securities fraud, costing investors US$830-billion each year, but most go undetected, according to a new study co-authored by a University of Toronto professor . And he says he fears fraud may be more prevalent in Canada. The study by Alexander Dyck, a professor of finance at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, and two co-authors, used a real-life situation as the basis for the study: The 2001 collapse of accounting firm Arthur Andersen, and the need for its clients to find a new auditor. Andersen had roughly 20 per cent of U.S. public companies as clients before the Enron Inc. scandal, and in the wake of its association with Enron, the firm’s former customers endured heightened scrutiny by their new auditors, investors and the public. “What we saw post-the Andersen blow-up was that [companies] that had Andersen prior were more likely to have revealed fraud,” Mr. Dyck said in an interview with Taus...