According to a report citing anonymous sources, a former FTX executive allegedly purchased discounted FTX tokens, FTT, at $0.05 per unit before they were released to the public, benefiting charitable causes Ruairi Donnelly, FTX’s former chief of staff, is accused of donating the tokens to Polaris Ventures, a Switzerland-based charity, and then selling the FTT for millions of dollars.
An anonymous source claims Polaris Ventures got the bulk of its wealth from the FTT transfer in 2019
According to a Tuesday Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report, FTX executives and related charities profited from obtaining ftx tokens (FTTs) at discounted prices. The charity in question is Polaris Ventures, a Swiss organization that claims to support artificial intelligence (AI) and effective altruism, anonymous sources familiar with the matter told the WSJ.
One particular AI organizationbacked by Polaris Venturesis the Cooperative AI Foundation, which received $15 million to support its aims and research.WSJ reporter Alexander Saeedy, a former FTX Chief of Staff Ruairi Donnelly cites an anonymous source who claims to have purchased FTX tokens (FTT) at a discounted rate of $0.05 per token, which is said to be the FTX employee discount at the time.
The source claims that Donnelly used $562,000 of his own salary to acquire FTT at this rate; Saeedy’s report states that Donnelly then donated the funds to Polaris through a grant and that “Mr. Donnelly still began trading publicly for $1 in 2019 and 2020 when he was working at FTX, then suggested that the foundation made millions of dollars selling the tokens.”
Donnelly’s lawyer stated that the FTT in question did not belong to FTX and was intended to pay his client’s outstanding wages.” To be absolutely clear, the FTTs that Mr. Donnelly directed to be donated to Polaris on his behalf are not FTX funds,” the lawyer said. The lawyer also pointed out that $30 million of Polaris’ funds are trapped in the FTX and that the foundation is a major creditor in the FTX’s bankruptcy case.
An anonymous source cited in the report further suggests that most of the foundation’s wealth initially came from the 2019 FTT transfer. The same source concludes that Donnelly is currently trying to sell the bankruptcy claims for a fraction of their value.
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