You Know We Have A Pretty Strict SFW Policy Here
So no, that's not some foul acronym as used by guttersnips (which are even worse than guttersnipes), although in future in the scamble market that is crypto-currency it may well become one. For why? I hear you enquire. Well, because a boatload of money, at least $7 billion, has gone missing from their accounts. I know we usually present currency in Pounds Sterling, it's just that with sums this large it doesn't really make a difference. Art!
This is Sam's current residence: Fox Hill Prison, in the Bahamas. It is a giant hovel infested with vermin, including rats, where people sleep six to a cell. The Bahamanians seem to feel that criminals deserve to languish in misery for being bad, with none of that snowflake nonsense about 'rehabilitating' them; if you do the crime and get caught you are jolly well going to suffer.
It's enough of a dim demesne that Sam Bankman-Fried felt down in the mouth about it, which is only natural when you're used to a $40 million penthouse in an exclusive club, and he (rather petulantly) claimed to be unwell and depressed, so he needed special vegan food and comfy pillows, neither of which he got. Remember! Bad in Bahamas means Belaboured! Art!
But! Lucky Sam has only just been extradited back to South Canada, where he probably won't encounter rats and roaches. He can get bail - IF he ponies up $250 million, which his parents have agreed to underwrite with their house and savings. If it goes to trial, SBF is facing a sentence of 115 years. Legal Eagle has a longer analysis of 24 minutes that I may also watch.
And guess what! Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang, two of SBF's partners in crime, have now been arrested. Their bail is set at (ha!) only $250,000, and both have pleaded guilty. Ol' Cas', bless her, was looking at a sentence of 110 years before apparently making a plea bargain, so she might get out of jail only shortly after becoming eligible for a pension. Art!
This craggy-faced bruiser is John Ray, a bankruptcy expert (who worked on the Enron case), who is the new CEO of FTX. It's his job to oversee the bankruptcy process, and try to recover funds for the debtees. He didn't mince words when speaking to the press about FTX, loudly declaring the whole business organisation to be a complete fraud.
Here an aside. Ol' Jo is being paid $1,300 per hour to act as CEO. Yes, which is still quite modest compared to those modern money-leeches who call themselves 'lawyers', because the ones representing FTX are being paid up to $2,165 per hour for their work. That's $346,000 in your monthly salary, considerably more than Your Humble Scribe gets, I can assure you.
Thanks to Joe Blogs for the above outline! Joe says this case is going to be complex thanks to the sheer amount of money involved, the number of investors who lost out, the incredibly obfuscating structure of FTX and the total lack of records. We may not see an end to it until 2024.
There is another question that only SBF can answer: why did he think he could get away with it? I don't think simple greed is the answer, because otherwise he and his crooked cronies would have flown the coop a year ago, before anything started to go wrong.
 |
| Hmmm perhaps |
Careful - Here Be Snakes!
Wellllll perhaps in a metaphorical sense. That'll make more sense in a tad.
You may remember Ukraine's Snake Island, a small but very strategically important island that sits off their coastline. The Borcs had invaded and generally infested it until the Ukrainians, in a simply outstanding fashion, gradually blew them to bits until the last survivors fled (what was left of them). Then the Ukrainians daringly set up their flag in a short venture onto the isle. Ruffian trolls and fanboys still asserted that the island was really still Ruffian because it -
O I say, what's this? Why, it's the daring Will Ripley of CNN. Art!
He and his cameraman and a small unit of Ukrainian minders travelled there by small speedboat, the better to evade Ruffian reconnaissance aircraft. Shame about the Bright Orange colouration. Art!
Note large, expensive destroyed Ruffian kit to port. Will and his mate are the only journalists allowed onto the island since the Ukrainians liberated it, which is a double-edged sword of an achievement, because - Art!
Due to the amount of Ruffian mines and booby-traps - those metaphorical snakes I mentioned - one has to be EXTREMELY careful about crossing ground. Will and his mate are following in the footsteps of these soldiers with supreme caution. Art!
More destroyed Ruffian kit and a camouflaged Ukrainian bunker. Art!
This is getting a bit repetitive - more destroyed Ruffian kit. You can see why NATO and Ukraine assessed that they lost 1 billion dollars-worth of kit on this stony little outcrop.
"The Sea Of Sand"
Continuing with martial themes. Our plucky protagonists who survived or escaped from Mersa Martuba have witnessed the ghastly end of the British taskforce 'Murraycol'.
‘Can’t we do
something, sir?’ asked Tam. Roger shook
his head, hating that they must stay away and isolated.
‘We’re in the
middle of miles of sand, Corporal. The
instant we open fire, they’ll drop us into a pit of liquid glass.’
Tam chewed his
nails and grimaced at the now departing aliens.
‘Okay. Let’s get down there and see if anyone
escaped or survived,’ ordered Roger.
There was no confidence in his voice.
The lack of
expectation was justified. No survivors
remained. Roger spent a full ten seconds
staring at the two Daimlers, trapped like flies in amber, the top of their
turrets a good three feet below the surface of their solid tomb, hatches ajar,
tyres crushed and melted to sad dark remnants.
God, what it
must be like, crushed and roasted alive by molten glass!
‘Sir, there’s
rifles and tommy guns and grenades in the trucks. Should we get a few?’
‘Aqua,’ said
Torrevechio, holding up a dozen canteens by their straps.
‘Yes. What food you can find, too.’
They didn’t
spend long salvaging from the vehicles; the heat radiated and reflected by and
from the sand was intense, and they felt like looters. Roger made sure to unseat a Bren gun from one
of the carriers, and a wooden crate full of loaded magazines for the weapon.
Brrrr not nice thoughts there. Conrad clearly has a horrid imagination.
You What?
Conrad was perusing the BBC's News website when he came across a sidebar that caused his brow to furrow. Art!
Yes, that's a Welsh dragon atop a location sign in Argentina.
Yes, there is a serious need for teachers fluent in Welsh to teach it in Argentina.
The reason is that a considerable number of Welsh emigrated to Argentina in the mid-19th century, back when they spoke Welsh as their first language and English as a detested fall-back. Their descendants kept the language alive and there's more interest in it than ever before.
Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.
Finally -
O the torment! As you should surely know by now, because I never stop harping on about it, Conrad works a long 11-hour day, and one of his motivators and guilty pleasures is getting an Xtra-large Kebab from Tony's Fish & Chips, which is about ten seconds away from my bus stop going home.
NOT ANY MORE!
The selfish swine are closed CLOSED I TELL YOU until 03/01/2023.
Conrad demi-distraught.
No comments:
Post a Comment