U.S. Reps. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) and Bill Huizenga (R-MI) are urging the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to provide more information on the charges filed by the agency against FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried.
Specifically, the two Republican lawmakers would like SEC Chair Gary Gensler to provide them with a staff recommendation memo as well as other information related to charges against Bankman-Fried.
The SEC provided the lawmakers with a briefing on the enforcement process, along with several other documents related to the case, but they did not provide McHenry and Huizenga with some of the specific information that they had requested previously.
“Your staff subsequently requested that we narrow the scope of the requested information in order to start a rolling production. Committee staff obliged and produced a narrowed list of custodians, a narrowed time frame, and a list of easily identifiable documents, such as the staff recommendation memo presented to the Commission for a vote on charges. Committee staff followed up more than a week later to check on the progress and were told that it was a ‘time-consuming and extensive process’ without any indication that a production was incoming. This is unacceptable,” they wrote in a letter to Gensler.
McHenry is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, while Huizenga chairs the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.
“We expect the staff recommendation memo to be produced immediately and all other material gathered as a result of the narrowed scope to be produced no later than 5:00 p.m. on April 17, 2023. Failure to produce the requested information could result in the Committee considering using compulsory process, if necessary, to obtain the requested information,” they added.