Sam Bankman-Fried’s legal team is making another attempt to bring up the influence of English law on FTX’s terms of service during his trial. They believe that this argument could potentially result in a “not guilty” verdict for some of the fraud charges against the founder of the exchange.
A filing including a proposed jury instruction said, “For misappropriation to have occurred, under the Government’s theory, there must have existed a trust, fiduciary relationship, or a similar relationship between FTX and its customers.”
The suggested jury instruction would inform the 12 people who are responsible for deciding the outcome of Bankman-Fried’s case that FTX’s interactions with its customers were regulated by the Terms of Service.
The Department of Justice had not yet replied to the most recent document submitted as of 10:30 p.m EDT.
However, in a previous document where they opposed one of Bankman-Fried’s suggested expert witnesses, it was evident that the prosecutors do not agree with the idea of solely examining the Terms of Service and how they are applied under English law as it, in their opinion, misrepresents the nature of the accusation.
A defense lawyer named Mark Cohen had the ex-General Counsel of FTX read a portion of the terms and conditions in a courtroom sometime earlier this month.
The court document stated, “The terms and any dispute shall be governed by, and construed in accordance with, English law.”
Judge Kaplan has informed the involved parties that he plans to organize a conference to discuss and debate the different jury instruction proposals once both sides have presented their cases, and this could happen as early as Wednesday.
Bankman-Fried, who testified last week, is currently undergoing questioning from the opposing side, and the Department of Justice anticipates completing this questioning by Tuesday morning.
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