Police in the Jersey, the largest of the Channel Islands, have been ordered to apologize to Roman Abramovich after admitting they conducted unlawful searches at properties linked to the Russian billionaire.

The former Chelsea FC owner was sanctioned in connection with Russia’s February invasion of Ukraine, during which a court ordered £6bn of his assets to be frozen.

Then in April, warrants were granted to search properties linked to Abramovich, during which documents and devices were seized by Jersey’s Economic Crime and Confiscation Unit (ECCU), the Daily Mail reports.

Following the searches, Abramovich challenged their legality, ultimately leading to Jersey police acknowledging on Friday that “the search warrants were obtained unlawfully,” and “that the search warrants should be quashed.”

It was said that the force failed to reach the sufficient level of evidence to warrant a search of any premises.

The police also agreed to pay damages and costs, confirmed that all copies of documents seized in the searches had been destroyed and that the police would apologise to Abramovich, according to legal documents. -Daily Mail

“Mr Abramovich has always acted in accordance with the law, we are pleased that the Jersey Police have conceded in relation to these unlawful and unfounded searches,” said Abramovich’s spokesman.

Abramovich earned his billions during the break-up of the Soviet Union through oil company Sibneft, along with Rusal aluminum and the airline Aeroflot. After owning Chelsea FC for nearly two decades, he sold to an American-led group in May of this year for a reported £4.25bn.

He also governed the remote Arctic region of Chukotka in Russia’s Far East, and has been involved in attempts to negotiate a settlement to the Ukraine war to no avail.

Abramovich’s frozen assets are a combination of company shares and cash held in bank accounts, and do not include physical assets such as real estate, or those held in Crown Dependencies, such as Jersey and Guernsey, according to the Mail.

So far over 1,200 individuals have been sanctioned by the UK, including high-profile businessmen and politicians, as well as over 120 entities in Russia.

By Themis Karalis of Container-News.com

Sea Intelligence, with the help of the Blank Sailings Tracker, looked at how carriers are reacting to the collapse of demand, particularly for imports to North America and Europe, in terms of blanking sailings.

The following figure shows a snapshot of the additional blank sailings that were announced (or unannounced ones that were captured by Sea-Intelligence) for the week 42-52 period.

The number of void sailings has been ramped up drastically on the Transpacific, but not so much on Asia-Europe, according to Sea-Intelligence’s report.

There have been 34 additional blank sailings on Asia-North America West Coast, and 16 on Asia-North America East Coast. For the former, carriers have announced an extra 7-11 void sailings in all but five weeks of the analysed period.

However, for weeks 51 and 52, carriers have scheduled no blank sailings on Asia-North America West Coast.

“This is a reflection of the carriers’ indecision as to how to approach the potential pre-Chinese New Year rush. It appears more to be a wait-and-see approach, in terms of whether there will be a seasonal demand spike,” commented Alab Murphy, CEO of Sea-Intelligence.

On the other hand, on Asia-Europe, there is not a similar trend, with Asia-North Europe only seeing an additional six void sailings, and Asia-Mediterranean seeing an additional four blank sailings.

The rise of automation could be set to enter hyperdrive speed at Amazon warehouses nationwide in response to Covid lockdowns, unionization, and the drive to improve margins via reducing labor costs. Human order pickers could be replaced within this decade by a new robotic arm that relies entirely on artificial intelligence and suction cups to identify and fulfill customer orders. 

Amazon unveiled the “Sparrow” robot on Thursday,” which can detect, select, and handle millions of items in a warehouse to complete a customer order, rendering a human picker obsolete.

“Leveraging computer vision and artificial intelligence (AI), Sparrow can recognize and handle millions of items. Last year, with the support of Amazon technologies, our employees around the world picked, stowed, or packed approximately 5 billion packages—or over 13 million packages per day,” the company wrote in a press release.

“It’s a major leap in technology challenge, and technology development,” Joe Quinlivan, a vice president of robotics and fulfillment technologies at the company, said during a press event unveiling the device. He said robots would replace the most repetitive-motion jobs in the future. 

Suppose Sparrow is widely deployed at fulfillment centers nationwide. In that case, this could mean hundreds of thousands of warehouse workers will be jobless in the coming years, if not by the end of the decade, as the company aims to automate warehouses fully. 

Automation aims to prevent shutdowns of warehouses in another health crisis. It also drives down mounting labor costs as workers fight to unionize. 

Amazon’s increased focus on robots indicates its master plan to reduce reliance on its human workforce. Meanwhile, for those workers trying to escape the warehouse hell of long hours and learning to code, well, the tidal wave of tech layoffs is even more bad news. 

Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Texas has now sent around 300 buses of immigrants to predominantly Democrat-run areas of the country in an effort to deal with an influx of illegal aliens at the southern border.

Gov. Greg Abbott announced the latest transportation of illegal immigrants to so-called “sanctuary” cities on Twitter on Nov. 11.

“The 300th Texas bus of migrants just left for Chicago,” the Republican governor wrote. “As [President Joe] Biden does nothing, Texas will continue taking unprecedented action to relieve our overwhelmed border communities & secure the border.”

A statement from Abbott’s office on Nov. 4 said that Texas has bused almost 8,300 illegal immigrants to Washington, D.C. since April, over 3,500 to New York City since Aug. 5, and more than 1,100 to Chicago since Aug. 31 as part of its effort to secure the border.

The governor’s office says the busing mission is “providing much-needed relief to our overwhelmed border communities.”

Abbott and other Republicans have criticized Biden’s open border policies for creating a crisis that has seen record-breaking numbers of illegal immigrants attempting to enter the United States.

Record Number of Arrests at Border

Roughly 4.9 million people have illegally crossed into the United States from Mexico since Biden took office in January 2021, according to a report released in August.

Meanwhile, more than 2.3 million illegal immigrants were arrested at the southern border during fiscal year 2022, according to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection published in September (pdf), the highest number ever recorded.

The uptick in illegal immigrants has also seen cartels bringing the deadly drug fentanyl across the border in record amounts.

However Democratic lawmakers have taken aim at Abbott’s busing program, and have accused Republicans of “human trafficking” the immigrants.

District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine has launched an investigation into whether Abbott and other GOP governors are misleading illegal immigrants into transporting them to places like Washington, Chicago, and New York.

According to a report by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, Racine said that his investigators interviewed immigrants who “talked persuasively about being misled, with talk about promised services” by trip organizers before boarding buses to other states. Racine did not provide further information about the probe.

Read more here…

A shocking new report via the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) revealed the world food import bill jumped to nearly $2 trillion in 2022 amid soaring inflation due to several factors, including currencies depreciating against the US dollar, the war in Ukraine, and La Nina-related climate change. 

FAO’s Food Outlook expects the tab for imports of wheat, rice, maize, vegetable oils, and all other farm goods will jump to an all-time high and about 10% increase over the record level of 2021, although the agency expects demand destruction in response to elevated food prices and depreciating currencies against the US dollar. 

Food-import bills are skyrocketing for developing countries, with most already in insurmountable debt. Many of these countries are quickly burning through dollar stockpiles at the fastest pace in two decades to defend their currencies against a rallying dollar. 

Falling emerging market currencies means the purchasing power of importing has declined. 

It comes as global food prices remain at lofty levels. 

“These are alarming signs from a food security perspective, indicating importers are finding it difficult to finance rising international costs, potentially heralding an end of their resilience to higher international prices,” FAO’s Markets and Trade Division warned in the report. 

Sri Lanka is a prime example of when a country ran out of reserves this year, defaulted on its overseas bonds, and couldn’t afford to import essential items such as food and fuel, which sparked social unrest. 

FAO also pointed out that wealthier nations will continue importing all sorts of foods while developing countries stick with staples. It also said fertilizers imports would soar to $424 billion in 2022, up 48% from the prior year and as much as 112% from 2020.

“Higher costs for imported energy and fertilizer are behind the foreseen increase. Both are particularly relevant in import bills, posing strains for the current accounts of low-income and lower middle-income countries,” the report said, adding that “As a result, some countries may be forced to reduce input applications, almost inevitably resulting in lower agricultural productivity and lower domestic food availability.”

FAO warned: “Negative repercussions for global agricultural output and food security” will likely extend into next year. 

All signs point to a troubling 2023: There are several signs the global food crisis could intensify next year. Several countries could be on the brink of unrest. 

Authored by MN Gordon via EconomicPrism.com,

On Thursday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that consumer prices, as measured by the consumer price index (CPI), inflated at an annual rate of 7.7 percent in October.  Investors went bananas on this apparent pullback in the headline CPI.

The stock market responded with one of its biggest single day rallies in history.  The S&P 500 jumped over 5.5 percent.  The NASDAQ jumped over 7.3 percent.  Of greater note, the yield on the 10-Year Treasury note dropped to just 3.81 percent – its lowest yield in over a month.

So, is raging consumer price inflation no longer a concern?  Has the ugly storm come and gone?  Can Powell now pivot?

Probably not.  More than likely, consumer price inflation will rage throughout the decade.  Regardless, now’s not the time to go all in on stocks.  We’ll explain why in just a moment.  But first several words on consumer price inflation.

Consumer price inflation, remember, is an effect of money supply inflation.  The Federal Reserve inflated its balance sheet with upwards of $5 trillion in digital monetary units – created out of thin air – between September 2019 and April 2022.

Since then, the Fed has contracted its balance sheet by about $300 billion – or by about 6 percent of the preceding inflation.  Clearly, there’s still plenty more inflation to be reckoned with.

And while the Fed, in concert with the Treasury and Congress, was busy spewing reams of printing press money into the economy between fall-2019 and spring-2022, other mistakes were also being made.

Supply chains, for example, were being broken by despotic lockdowns.  Many of these supply chains remain in disrepair.  On top of that, foolish energy policies, dictated by executive order, constrained the production of oil and gas.

Raging consumer price inflation is the effect of too much money facing too few goods.  Central planners, both at the Fed and in Washington, are responsible for the mass money printing and the decline in economic productivity that have resulted in today’s sky-high costs.

To bring prices back to earth, an ultra-mega economic depression is needed.  For this reason, the Fed’s intervening in the debt market to trigger debt deflation and demand destruction in the hopes of preventing consumer prices from raging higher.

The Fed, as you well know, has been steadily hiking interest rates since March.  To be clear, the Fed’s rate hikes are to the federal funds rate.  However, they do, in fact, influence longer-term rates.

This year, for example, the Fed has hiked the federal funds rate from a target range of 0 to 0.25 percent to a target range of 3.75 to 4.00 percent.  As a result, the 10-year Treasury rate has jumped from around 1.63 percent at the start of the year to over 3.81 percent today.

The effects of these rate hikes are becoming more and more evident…

Scrapping the Playbook

For many Americans, the residential real estate market is where the relationship between asset prices and interest rates is most readily understood.  Rising interest rates make the cost of financing a house more expensive.  Thus, housing prices must fall to adjust for increased borrowing costs.

This same dynamic also occurs in debt markets.  As interest rates rise, the price of debt derived financial assets – like bonds – fall.  Consequently, both borrowers and bond investors are having a rough time in 2022.

Consider the hospital chain Community Health Systems Inc.  According to its website, “CHS is committed to helping people get well and live healthier.”

That’s a cause that just about anyone can support.  Nonetheless, one should think twice before lending CHS financial support.  The company’s bonds have dropped about 35 percent since September to 42 cents on the dollar.

Meanwhile, CHS is struggling to get well and live healthier.  Yet its financial condition could be terminal.  The company’s attempting to reduce its $12 billion debt load.  In fact, it recently bought back $267 million of bonds.  Alas, earnings are falling faster than it can pay back its debt.

Last month, on the company’s earnings call, Chief Financial Officer Kevin Hammons clarified the situation: “Elevated contract labor and wage inflation continue to affect our…performance.”

If interest rates were falling, as they mostly had for the last 40 years, CHS could simply refinance its debt and secure a lower monthly payment.  This has been the number one play in the book for businesses and homeowners alike since the early 1980s.

This play has been scrapped by rising interest rates.  Many businesses, homeowners, and debt investors are now discovering the world is not as soft and forgiving as they thought it was…

Instances of Disorder

The greatest asset bubble in human history – a bubble in stocks, bonds, real estate, cryptocurrencies, digital token art, bad ideas, and everything else – that was inflated by the Fed’s seemingly endless supply of cheap credit, is now deflating.  What this means, exactly, is hard to tell.

So far, financial markets are generally adjusting in an orderly fashion.  But there’s still a long way to go.  And, already, there have been several notable instances of disorder.

Last month the United Kingdom (UK) gilt market’s long maturities collapsed.  This required the Bank of England (BOE) to purchase tens of billions of pounds of long gilts to stem a Lehman moment.  The gilt market may have relaxed, temporarily.  Yet has the problem actually gone away?

There was also the recent near liquidity crisis at Credit Suisse.  If you recall, several weeks ago the second largest Swiss Bank suffered a bank run as fearful depositors pulled their money.  Credit Suisse even admitted that one or more of its units breached its liquidity requirements.

Should remaining depositors be worried?  Even with Thursday’s monster rally, the bank’s share price is down over 56 percent year-to-date.

Then, this week, there was the ultra-mega crypto crash.  Thirty-year old crypto visionary, and FTX co-founder, Sam Bankman-Fried (simplified to SBF), surfed his $16 billion wealth illusion wave into a 94 percent wipeout.

Collateral damage includes Softbank Vision Fund, Singapore wealth fund Temasek, Tom Brady (#tommy), and many others.  Of particular note, is the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, which gambled $400 million into the Bahamian cryptocurrency exchange at a $32 billion valuation in January.  Where was the due diligence?

With these exceptions, financial markets have not had a major freak out – yet!  There have been no front-page reports of bankers swan diving from high-rises.  No CFOs have stepped in front of trains.

There hasn’t been a major gut-wrenching panic.  The Fed is still executing Operation Break Stuff.

So, when will the major panic occur?  And where will the major breakages take place?

Death to Zombies

It takes time for the financial pressures to manifest in a world overloaded with debt.  Beneath the surface the pressures of rising interest rates spread out via cracks and fissures.  They traverse the subterranean far and wide, undetected by the unassuming eye, as they seek out places of weakness.

These are the places where breakages occur.

This week the Wall Street Journal reported several findings from a recent investigation.  A critical place of weakness, they discovered, is American businesses:

“North American companies will have to come up with at least $200 billion in 2022 and 2023 to cover rising interest expenses, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of data from Fitch Ratings of the companies it rates.  Borrowing costs could remain elevated for years if high inflation persists, splitting American corporations into two camps: those that can cut debt and survive on their own earnings, and those that can’t.”

Rising interest rates, no doubt, bring death to zombies.  By zombies, we’re referring to those companies in the second camp that would have died long ago, if not for the sustenance of artificially suppressed cheap credit.

These zombies – like Washington Mutual, Ringling Bros, Toys R Us, and many other past zombies that did not survive the last down cycle – will soon vanish from the face of the earth forever.  Here’s why, again from the WSJ:

“Funding of investment vehicles called collateralized loan obligations plummeted 97 percent from last year’s levels to $1.3 billion […].  CLOs are the biggest buyers of junk-rated corporate loans that private-equity firms use to buy target companies, and the flow of those loans declined by about 70 percent this October to $54 billion.

“The pain on Wall Street reverberates on Main Street.  Private-equity firms did about $1 trillion of deals last year, penetrating even niche industries, such as car washes, and the cost of the loans those companies borrow rises in lockstep with interest rates.  When private-equity funds turn less profitable, that hits U.S. pension funds, which increasingly rely on the asset class and are facing big losses in public stock and bond markets.”

In short, business credit for zombie companies has evaporated.  At this point, even if the Fed could pivot (which it can’t) it would be too late.  The damage has been done.

As night follows day.  And day follows night.  Big time defaults are coming.  Moreover, the bear market’s not over…not by a long shot.

You can take that to the bank.

*  *  *

We’re on the precipice of an ugly fall into the abyss.  This perilous condition has been in the making for many decades.  But you must not be a victim.  For this reason, after nearly two decades of research, I damn near killed myself putting together the Financial First Aid Kit.  Inside, you’ll find everything you need to know to protect your wealth and privacy as the global economy slips into a worldwide depression.

The latest Bloomberg Trade Tracker reveals an ominous outlook for world trade due to soaring interest rates, the war in Ukraine, a slowdown in the US economy, and zero Covid in China. A shortage of containers has entirely reversed into a glut as crashing shipping rates and canceled sails gain momentum during what is supposed to be the busiest shipping period of the year. 

“The world’s two biggest economies are feeling glum about the export outlook, with both the US and China gauges in contraction in October and the American one in “below-normal” range on the Tracker,” according to Bloomberg. 

Earlier this week, we explained that economic storm clouds are gathering worldwide as some of the largest shipping companies warn about decelerating global trade. US shipper FedEx and Danish shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S have been vocal about emerging signs of a global slowdown.

“Global trade is moving backwards this year,” Maersk’s chief executive officer Soren Skou told Bloomberg Television at the start of November. 

FedEx CFO Michael Lenz told an audience Tuesday at the Robert W Baird Global Industrial Conference earlier this week that his company parked planes cut costs in response to weak demand for package delivery. 

The Covid boom for goods has evaporated. Consumers have switched from buying computers and television to spending whatever money they have left on experiences. 

We predict in May that an inventory glut, i.e., the reverse bullwhip effect, would cool the booming freight market. It’s now peak shipping season — retailers have already canceled overseas orders as freight companies reduce shipping capacity ahead of Black Friday and Christmas. 

Trans-Pacific shipping rates are cratering. 

Slumping global demand and faltering world trade has led to another problem: a massive container glut at ports. 

“There is just not enough depot space to accommodate all the containers. With the further release of container inventory into the market (e.g., from the disposal of leasing fleets), there will be added pressure on depots in the coming months. 

“This will be a key challenge for some and a competitive advantage for others in the business, especially in China because of the empty container repositioning there,” Christian Roeloffs, cofounder and CEO of Container xChange, said in an industry update this week. 

Italian container depot owner Sogese chief executive Andrea Monti told Container xChange:

“Whatever was coming in and out of, for instance, our Milan depot is quite stuck. And the container volume at the depots is increasing to an extent that we are returning some requests for depot service agreements. We are in a situation where we are not able to accept new clients for some locations.”

Monti told Container xChange that peak shipping season “technically did not happen this year” because of the global slowdown, as many retailers are left holding high inventory levels. 

Johannes Schlingmeier, cofounder and CEO of Container xChange, said:

“There is enough inventory with retailers. Once these inventories exhaust in North America and Europe, companies will order again, and demand for shipping capacity will pop back up. This won’t go back to max pandemic levels but certainly be back to the long-term average upward trend. What has happened now is that the cargo is “on time” again and hence you’ll see a slowdown in new ordering as companies adjust to this more efficient turnaround times in ocean freight delivery.

“For container owners, this could potentially mean a rise in container storage fee by depots as more containers pile up to disincentivize longer staying containers at the depots.”

The rise in canceled sailings was reported by maritime research company Drewry, indicated between late November and early December, 14% of sailings have been canceled on the world’s top shipping lanes. 

Container prices on the Los Angeles to Shanghai line and JP Morgan’s consolidated global manufacturing PMIs have declined since late 2021. 

This year’s monetary tightenings by global central banks take about 9-12 months to filter through the real economy, which means world trade will slow even more in the quarters ahead. The latest evidence of trouble ahead if a glut of containers at ports. 

A highly-anticipated Friday night update of voting results from Arizona’s Maricopa County defied GOP boosters’ predictions by resulting in net losses for Republican candidates. Nevada’s evening releases likewise brought bad news for the GOP. 

The Arizona update prompted Associated Press and other major outlets to declare that Democratic incumbent Senator Mark Kelly has clinched re-election. With two Senate seats still in play in Nevada and Georgia, Democrats are within one victory of renewing control of the upper chamber for another two years. 

The odds of Democrats winning the Nevada Senate race went up on Friday night, as new results, including a batch from Reno’s Washoe County, trimmed Republican Adam Laxalt’s lead to just 821 votes over incumbent Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto.

An estimated 94% of Nevada’s results are in. According to the Nevada Independent‘s Jon Ralston, between 23,000 and 25,000 of the remaining 61,795 votes will come from Las Vegas’s Clark County, where Laxalt has thus far trailed 52% to 45%.

.@RalstonReports breaks down what to expect next in the Nevada Senate race. pic.twitter.com/kykjf9K8Pa

— 11th Hour (@11thHour) November 12, 2022

The Arizona governor’s race is still considered too close to call. In the lead-up to Friday night’s Maricopa update, Republican gubernatorial hopeful Kari Lake assured followers that “our votes are about to start.” 

Arizona & America:

Rest assured that I have the brightest & best attorneys in the Nation, right here on the ground in Arizona.

Every ballot has eyes on it.

GOP Ballots (Election Day) ballots start dropping tonight.

Keep your Champagne cold, our votes are about to start.

— Kari Lake (@KariLake) November 12, 2022

When the numbers hit, however, they boosted Democrat Katie Hobbs’ lead to 31,097 votes. With Democrats having hoped that the latest result would merely not hurt Hobbs too much, even MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki looked genuinely surprised to see the numbers actually helped her.  

The latest batch of votes from Maricopa County — home to Phoenix — was reportedly composed primarily of “early vote drop-offs” — early-voting ballots that voters completed and then brought to a polling station on Election Day rather than mailing them in. 

“When people are told to drop off their early ballot on Election Day, those can’t be counted that night. You can’t just run them through a machine. They have to be signature checked, scanned first, then processed by a bipartisan board before they can be counted,” former Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell told Fox News.  

The governor’s race is not over, though — there’s a chance Lake’s predicted votes for her are still out there. 

Phoenix ABC15 data/political analyst Garrett Archer, a former elections analyst for the Arizona secretary of state, cautioned Democrats against premature celebration, tweeting that there remain “some very, very friendly batches coming for [the Republican] slate in Maricopa.” 

Lake is “very much in this,” he added. About 275,000 ballots remain to be counted in Maricopa, out of about 406,000 statewide.  

Not that I want to rain on anyone’s party. But a reminder that based on the affidavit transmission party data we still have some very, very friendly batches coming for R slate in Maricopa. Almost certainly not friendly enough for Masters.
Lake and Hamadeh are very much in this.

— The AZ – abc15 – Data Guru (@Garrett_Archer) November 12, 2022

While Lake’s Twitter account had been a steady stream of victory-guarantees all week, her only Friday evening tweet after the latest update was a Veterans Day message.   

There was some good news for Republicans on Friday: Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo was declared the winner of the Nevada governor race, dislodging Democratic incumbent Steve Sisolak. With 94% of the vote counted, Lombardo leads 49.2% to 47.0%. 

Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

The European Union will need up to $462 billion (450 billion euros) in investment just to keep the current level of its nuclear power generation capacity, the EU Commissioner for Energy, Kadri Simson, said at a nuclear energy forum this week.

Nuclear power will have an important role to play in the EU’s climate targets of low-carbon electricity generation, Simson said at the European Nuclear Energy Forum in Prague.  

“The backbone of the future European carbon free power system will be predominantly renewables. But the reality is that these renewables will need to be complemented with a stable baseload electricity production. This is why nuclear energy is not just a safety and security concern, but also a real solution,” she added.

This year, a year when surging energy prices have highlighted the importance of energy security, the EU is particularly focused on its nuclear power availability.

According to the EU modeling, nuclear power generation will account for around 15%-16% of the EU’s power output in 2030 and 2050, Simson said.

The EU needs a stable generation capacity, at the level of just over 100 GW, in the coming decades. Yet, a lot of investment will be needed to keep that generation capacity in the future.

“Our analysis shows that without immediate investment, around 90% of existing reactors would be shut down around the time when we need them most – in 2030,” Simson noted.

The EU will need between $360 billion (350 billion euros) and $462 billion (450 billion euros) of investment just to maintain the current generation capacity, and another up to $51.3 billion (50 billion euros) in the long-term operation of existing reactors, according to the EU commissioner.

New technology, such as Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), could be the solution to integrate the energy system and decarbonize the sectors that pose the biggest challenge, said Simson, adding that the EU aims to have the first European SMRs go live in the early 2030s.

Update (0915ET): 

A post in FTX’s Telegram channel called the unauthorized transactions a “hack,” according to WSJ. 

NEW: FTX said in a statement in its official Telegram channel that it had been hacked, instructing users to delete all FTX apps and don’t access the company’s website

— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) November 12, 2022

Tom Robinson, the co-founder of blockchain analysis company Ellipticm, said at least $473 million in crypto appeared to be taken from FTX. He said the tokens were converted to ether. 

***

Another day, another plot twist in the FTX bankruptcy saga. 

FTX — which was clearly insolvent after the biggest fraud in crypto history — filed for bankruptcy on Friday. The official Twitter account of FTX retweeted Ryne Miller, the company’s US general counsel, who warned late Friday: 

“Investigating abnormalities with wallet movements related to consolidation of ftx balances across exchanges – unclear facts as other movements not clear. Will share more info as soon as we have it.” 

Investigating abnormalities with wallet movements related to consolidation of ftx balances across exchanges – unclear facts as other movements not clear. Will share more info as soon as we have it. @FTX_Official

— Ryne Miller (@_Ryne_Miller) November 12, 2022

Miller then tweeted:

“Following the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings – FTX US and FTX [dot] com initiated precautionary steps to move all digital assets to cold storage. Process was expedited this evening – to mitigate damage upon observing unauthorized transactions.

Following the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings – FTX US and FTX [dot] com initiated precautionary steps to move all digital assets to cold storage. Process was expedited this evening – to mitigate damage upon observing unauthorized transactions.

— Ryne Miller (@_Ryne_Miller) November 12, 2022

Then another twist emerged when an administrator on the Telegram support group for FTX stated: 

“FTX has been hacked . . . Don’t go on FTX site as it might download Trojans.”

“With all eyes on FTX, the late-night fund transfers on a Friday night raised questions about the company’s intent. While some blockchain investigators saw it as the start of the bankruptcy process, speculations around ill-intent or an external hack surfaced across the crypto ecosystem,” Cointelegraph explained. 

If you’re wondering WTF happened overnight…

• $600m left FTXs wallet
• FTX’s telegram said it was a hack
• The Site/App are infected
• Blackhat theft at ~450m
• FTX rescued ~200m
• soBTC on Solana has lost peg (-77%)
• and more.

Hacker or inside job? 🤔

— Edgy – The DeFi Edge 🗡️ (@thedefiedge) November 12, 2022

Fraud running rampant.

Millions of funds are currently flowing off of FTX. https://t.co/z9aZYRvCds

— Dylan LeClair 🟠 (@DylanLeClair_) November 12, 2022

SBF literally just hacked the remaining assets at FTX. Guarantee it’s him. He’s done this before (see my previous tweet).

The fact he has not been arrested already shows negligence of @DOJPH & @SECGov. Do your FREAKING job.

— Ben Armstrong (@Bitboy_Crypto) November 12, 2022

🚨MASSIVE REVELATION
“The hack seems to be internal” – Alameda security auditor live on the space

The ‘mango hack’ was funded by an FTX wallet. Auditor brought the issue up to FTX and were ghosted.

👇

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) November 12, 2022

JUST IN: SBF had a “backdoor” built into FTX’s accounting system, allowing him to alter the company’s financials without alerting executives and auditors – Reuters

— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) November 12, 2022

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried resigned yesterday and was replaced by John J. Ray, III – the lawyer who helped clean up Enron – as incoming CEO.

SBF’s crypto empire collapse resulted in Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index downgrading his net wealth from $15.6 billion on Nov. 4 to zero by Friday. 

Many on Twitter speculate SBF jumped on a private jet to Argentina. 

The plane CT thinks is transporting SBF is now over Argentina

(LVKEB is you want to follow on flightradar) pic.twitter.com/tdyiDtDHZ9

— Ivan on Tech 🇺🇦🥑 – Building Moralis Web3 (@IvanOnTech) November 12, 2022

Ok SBF is definitely on the run now. I need a bounty hunter to take me to him… it’s the only correct way the movie can end.

— Ben Armstrong (@Bitboy_Crypto) November 12, 2022

It remains unclear if the late-night fund transfers, totaling more than $600 million, according to CoinDesk, are part of the bankruptcy process or something more sinister, such as a hack. 

Reuters spoke with two people familiar with the matter who said upwards of $1 billion of customer funds have vanished from FTX. 

CoinDesk said, “Many FTX wallet holders are also reporting that they are seeing $0 balances in their FTX.com and FTX US wallets.”

Hmmm…

This tracks.#FTX #FTXbankruptcy #ftxwithdrawal #ftxhack pic.twitter.com/bjgl3XvZxk

— Jypto | Crypt3d Punk (@JyptoCrunky) November 12, 2022