FTX US's ex-boss says he was threatened with losing his job after he raised concerns about the crypto exchange – but never suspected multibillion-dollar fraud
- Brett Harrison, ex-FTX US president, has opened up about his experiences at the bankrupt crypto exchange.
- Harrison made a formal complaint about FTX's problems but didn't suspect multibillion-dollar fraud.
Brett Harrison, the former president of FTX's US affiliate, said he flagged problems at the now-collapsed crypto exchange — but was threatened with dismissal when he finally made a formal complaint.
The threat was made on behalf of disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, Harrison said in a 49-post Twitter thread Saturday.
"I raised concerns at the company believing that the management and organizational issues I saw were typical of growing start-ups, and that my role, as an experienced financial services executive, was to correct them and unlock the next stage of the company's growth," Harrison tweeted.
"I never could have guessed that underlying these kinds of issues — which I'd seen at other more mature firms in my career and believed not to be fatal to business success — was multi-billion-dollar fraud," he added.
Harrison described his relationship with FTX's ex-CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and gave a peek behind the scenes at the crypto group, after promising last week to "share in time" what he knew about the company.
US prosecutors are looking into what they have called a "fraud of epic proportions" at the FTX group of companies, and they have charged its ex-CEO and founder Sam Bankman-Fried on eight criminal counts. As the bankruptcy process unfolds, more details are emerging of what FTX spent money on, including lavish real-estate purchases and private jets.
After 11 months at FTX, Harrison made what he called "one last try" at raising what he saw as the biggest organizational problems at the company, after finding himself frozen out of important decision making. He made a written formal complaint in early April last year, and said he would resign if the issues weren't addressed, he said.
"In response, I was threatened on Sam's behalf that I would be fired and that Sam would destroy my professional reputation," Harrison tweeted.
"I was instructed to formally retract what I'd written and to deliver an apology to Sam that had been drafted for me."
Harrison criticized Bankman-Fried as an "insecure," "spiteful" and "prideful" boss who gaslit and manipulated anyone who challenged him. What was a "wonderful" experience working at FTX US in the beginning later turned out to be terrible, he said.
The ultimatum over his complaint pushed Harrison to decide to leave the company, he added. After a few months spent winding down things at FTX.US, he resigned as president in September.
Now Harrison is seeing funding for his own startup, which will provide algorithmic-focused crypto-trading software. The as-yet publicly unnamed company has received investment from SkyBridge Capital's Anthony Scaramucci.