Chair of the House Financial Services Committee Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), and Chair of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-Mich.), have sent a letter to Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Gary Gensler demanding further information relating to the charges filed by the agency against FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried.
The SEC filed its complaint against Bankman-Fried in December 2022, charging him with defrauding investors in violation of section 17(a) of the Securities Act of 1933 and section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.
This is the two representatives’ second attempt to gain such information from Gensler and the SEC. In this second letter, the lawmakers threaten to use “compulsory process, if necessary” that could be taken to obtain the requested information should the agency continue to fail to fulfill the request.
“On Feb. 10, 2023, we sent you a letter requesting documents related to charges filed by the SEC against Sam Bankman-Fried,” the lawmakers wrote in this latest letter. “Ignoring the deadline, the SEC actively impeded committee staff from discussing the request with anyone in the Office of the General Counsel until Chairman Huizenga formally requested a conversation with the SEC general counsel. The subsequent staff level conversations have yet to yield any of the requested documents.”
The lawmakers charge in their letter that SEC staff requested they “narrow the scope” of the requested information in order to start complying with the request for documents.
“Committee staff obliged and produced a narrowed list of custodians, a narrowed time frame, and a list of easily identifiable documents, such as the staff recommendation memo presented to the commission for a vote on charges,” the congressmembers stated.
When committee staff followed up more than a week later to check on the progress, the representatives asserted their staff was told it was a “time consuming and extensive process,” without any indication that production was incoming. The two congressman stated they found this to be “unacceptable.”