Sam Bankman-Fried rejects request from Ukraine-based FTX victim to testify remotely

• Prosecutors say SBF's lawyers declined a request for a Ukraine-based FTX customer to testify remotely.
• The customer lost a "large portion" of his life savings from FTX's collapse, they said.

Sam Bankman-Fried's lawyers declined a request from prosecutors to allow a Ukraine-based FTX victim to testify remotely at his trial, which is due to start on Tuesday.

Prosecutors submitted a court filing to Judge Lewis A. Kaplan on Saturday to appeal the opposition and allow two-way video conferencing because most of FTX's customers and victims are based abroad.

The prosecutors wrote that Bankman-Fried's defense "does not consent to the remote testimony."

They said: "Due to FTX's international popularity, many of the FTX customers are dispersed across the world, making the coordination of international authorizations to permit testimony in the United States and international travel arrangements exceedingly complicated."

This particularly relates to one witness who is located in Ukraine and "lost a substantial portion of his life savings that he had entrusted to FTX when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022." He is referred to as "FTX Customer-1" in the filing.

FTX Customer-1 is restricted by Ukraine's wartime law that prevents men considered fit to fight from leaving the country unless the authorities grant them permission, the prosecutors said.

"Even if that permission were to be granted, FTX Customer-1 would still need to travel by a combination of train and bus for several hundred miles through Ukraine during an ongoing war, cross a border to a neighboring country that has international flights to the United States, travel an additional distance to the nearest international airport, and then travel by air to the United States, a process that the Government estimates would take at least approximately three days in each direction," they added.

Insider contacted Bankman-Fried's lawyers via email for comment but didn't immediately hear back.

Bankman-Fried faces seven criminal charges for conspiracy to commit securities fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering, among other charges, after the implosion of his company last year.

His trial is scheduled to begin on Tuesday and is expected to continue through November.