Stanford University plans to return millions of dollars it received from bankrupt crypto exchange FTX and related entities, a university spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
“We have been in discussions with attorneys for the FTX debtors to recover these gifts and we will be returning the funds in their entirety,” a university spokesperson said in an emailed statement on Tuesday.
The news comes on the heels of a lawsuit from FTX advisers — attempting to recover funds owed to customers of the bankrupt exchange — alleging the parents of co-founder and former Chief Executive Officer Sam Bankman-Fried exploited their influence over FTX to “enrich themselves, directly and indirectly, by millions of dollars,” according to court papers.
Allan Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried are legal scholars and taught at Stanford Law School. Among other things, the suit alleges Stanford received gifts totaling some $5.5 million from FTX-related entities from November 2021 to May 2022.
“Stanford received gifts from the FTX Foundation and FTX-related companies largely for pandemic-related prevention and research,” the Stanford spokesperson said in a statement.
Earlier Tuesday, attorneys for Bankman and Fried in a statement called FTX’s allegations of fraudulent transfers “completely false.”