Alameda Research is looking to get nearly $446 million from Voyager Digital. It paid about the same amount to Voyager last year, and bankruptcy laws may result in it being returned.
Alameda Research, the sister company to the bankrupt exchange FTX, is aiming to have Voyager Digital return $445.8 million in funds. The latter also filed for bankruptcy last year. The filing marks another major incident that is taking place in the FTX saga, and it’s unclear how it will proceed, given Voyager’s own financial troubles.
Voyager was a crypto lending company that had made loans to FTX and Alameda Research. FTX had paid about $442.7 million to Voyager — almost as much as it hopes to get back. The reasoning is that the loan payments were made close to FTX’s bankruptcy filing, which means they are eligible to be returned. This can then be budgeted towards paying FTX creditors back.
The bankruptcy rules allow for the return of the funds because it prevents favoring one set of creditors over another. There’s a legitimate chance that the funds will be returned.
It’s a startling moment in an already intense case. FTX had even offered to purchase Voyager, but any hope of that was short-lived once FTX imploded. The exchange also mentioned that Voyager and other crypto lenders were “knowingly or recklessly” leading them toward Alameda. It stated that “Voyager’s business model was that of a feeder fund.”
Multiple Investigations Underway As Developments Unfold
Meanwhile, there have been plenty of updates with respect to the Alameda and FTX cases. Alameda liquidators lost $72,000 in AAVE tokens when moving funds to a single centralized multi-sig wallet. Hackers also exploited over $1.7 million from Alameda wallets.
The Charity Commission, a charity regulator in England and Wales, is also investigating a charity called Effective Ventures Foundation. This charity reportedly has ties to FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried.
As for Voyager, a U.S. bankruptcy court approved a $1 billion bid by Binance.US for Voyager’s assets. The court said the sale would become final pending a future court hearing.
FTX and Alameda Has a Long Road Ahead of It
Other controversial incidents related to FTX have also popped up in recent weeks. Several former FTX executives reportedly backed notorious representative George Santos. This includes FTX senior executive Claire Watanabe, head of product Ramnik Arora, and co-CEO Ryan Salame.
Other reports show that FTX was under investigation by Australian regulators as much as six months before its bankruptcy. The exchange has nearly 30,000 creditors in Australia.
Of course, there are many more creditors than that — the estimate is around 1 million. The exchange owes parties that include small Bahamian businesses and major names like The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Stanford University.