Mr. Bankman-Fried’s business and political empire has always been a family affair. The founder of FTX was a prolific political donor, and he was part of a network of donors who gave money to groups recommended by Mind the Gap, people familiar with the organization said. He also helped fund a non-profit called Guarding Against Pandemics, which was run by his 27-year-old brother, Gabe Bankman-Fried.
Mr. Bankman was closely involved with FTX. In the early days, he helped the company recruit its first lawyers. Last year, he joined FTX staff in meetings on Capitol Hill advising his son as Mr. Bankman-Fried prepared to testify before the House Financial Services Committee, a person familiar with the matter said. FTX employees occasionally consulted him on tax-related matters, the person said.
“From the beginning, I always helped when I was useful,” said Mr. Bankman in August on an FTX podcast.
Mr. Bankman visited the FTX offices in the Bahamas once a month, said a person who saw him there. Among the much younger staff, he cultivated a paternal personality, regaling employees with stories from his son’s childhood, the person said. He and Mrs. Fried resided in a $16.4 million home in Old Fort Bay, a gated community in Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas; the couple’s names appear on property documents, according to Reuters, though Mr Bankman-Fried has said the house was “intended to be company property”.
Ms. Heller, the couple’s spokeswoman, said Mr. Bankman and Mrs. Fried “never intended and never believed that they had any economic or economic property in the house.”
As an employee, Mr. Bankman focused on FTX’s charitable activities. He curated the Miami event and selected the teams of high school students to compete for $1 million in FTX scholarships.
Mr. Bankman also leveraged family ties to expand FTX’s reach. His sister, Barbara Miller, who works in Florida as a political consultant, introduced him to Newton Sanon, the general manager of OIC of South Florida, a nonprofit that helps people with workforce development training to promote economic mobility. (Ms. Miller did not respond to a request for comment.)
