Mr. Bankman-Fried’s business and political empire remained a family affair. The FTX founder is a prolific political donor who is part of a network of donors who donate to groups recommended by Mind the Gap, people familiar with the group said. He also helps fund a nonprofit called Guarding Against Pandemics, which is run by his 27-year-old brother, Gabe Bankman-Fried.
Mr. Bankman is deeply involved with FTX. Early on, he helped the firm recruit its first lawyers. Last year, he attended meetings on Capitol Hill with FTX employees and advised Mr. Bankman-Fried his son as he prepared to testify before the House Financial Services Committee, a person familiar with the matter said. FTX employees occasionally consult him on tax-related matters, the person said.
“From the beginning, whenever I was useful, I was there to help,” Mr. Bankman said on an August FTX podcast.
A person who met Bankman in the Bahamas said Mr. Bankman visited FTX’s Bahamas offices once a month. Among the much younger staff, he cultivated a kindly image, entertaining staff with stories about his son’s youth, the person said.He and Freed live in a $16.4 million home in Old Fort Cove, a gated community in Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas; the couple’s names are allegedly on real estate documents Reutersalthough Mr Bankman-Fried has said the house “is intended to be the property of the company”.
The couple’s spokeswoman, Ms. Heller, said Mr. Bankman and Ms. Freed “never intended, and never believed, that they had any beneficial or financial ownership of the home.”
As an employee, Mr. Bankman focused on FTX’s philanthropic activities. He organized the Miami event, which selected teams of high school students to compete for $1 million in FTX funding.
Mr. Bankman also used family connections to expand FTX’s influence. His sister, Barbara Miller, worked as a political consultant in Florida and introduced him to Newton Sanon, chief executive of the South Florida Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), a Nonprofit organization that helps people train for workforce development to promote economic mobility. (Ms. Miller did not respond to a request for comment.)
