Sam Bankman-Fried borrowed $546 million from his bankrupt empire to buy Robinhood shares

The pair borrowed the funds earlier this year. The transactions were documented in a series of promissory notes, detailed in an affidavit that surfaced in a dispute in US bankruptcy court in New Jersey on Tuesday. 

The Robinhood stake — about 56 million shares in total — is at the center of a multi-jurisdictional ownership fight playing out in Antigua, New Jersey and Delaware. FTX, bankrupt crypto lender BlockFi Inc. and an individual FTX creditor are all trying to establish claims to the shares in separate legal proceedings.

BlockFi is suing Emergent Fidelity Technologies, the corporate entity that owns the Robinhood shares, for control of those shares, claiming they back a loan made to Alameda. FTX lawyers have said former Alameda chief executive Caroline Ellison pledged the shares to BlockFi just before FTX’s collapse. 

Alameda’s borrowing from FTX is at the core of the fraud case against Bankman-Fried unfolding in Manhattan federal court. It’s unclear if the funds at issue in the bankruptcy dispute originated with FTX. 

Bankman-Fried attested to the loans in an affidavit submitted to a judge in Antigua earlier this month, where Emergent Fidelity has been placed in insolvency proceedings. Lawyers for the company submitted the affidavit to BlockFi’s bankruptcy judge on Tuesday. The Wall Street Journal reported on the news earlier.

In his affidavit, Bankman-Fried said the $546 million in loans from Alameda were “capitalized into” Emergent Fidelity. Bankman-Fried owns 90% of Emergent and Wang owns the rest.

The company then purchased 56 million shares in Robinhood, according to the affidavit. Bankman-Fried originally filed the affidavit in the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court in Antigua on Dec. 12, the day of his arrest. He was seeking to wrest control of Emergent Fidelity from court-appointed liquidators on the island.

It is one of several battles Bankman-Fried is facing following the collapse of FTX last month. The 30-year-old is currently on bail and living in California after Manhattan prosecutors charged him with orchestrating a yearslong fraud involving billions of dollars of customer funds.

Ellison, who pleaded guilty to fraud offenses in a deal with federal prosecutors, signed off on the loan to Bankman-Fried and Wang, the court papers show. Wang has also flipped on Bankman-Fried and cut a deal with prosecutors.

The case is BlockFi Inc v. Emergent Fidelity Technologies Ltd, 22-19361, US Bankruptcy Court, District of New Jersey.