, with a torrent of lavish perks throughout late 2021 and 2022 – only to plunge the $32 billion company into bankruptcy last November.
Baradwaj, detailing his experience for the first time in an exclusive interview with The Post, was in the room with Ellison when she staged her now-infamous call with employees. “Mr. Bankman-Fried maintains his innocence and looks forward to his day in court,” Bankman-Fried spokesperson Mark Botnick said in a statement.Ellison’s legal team did not return The Post’s request for comment.
“Her tone when she said this had a kind of urgency that none of us had ever really seen in her before. We could tell that something was going on,” Baradwaj said. “We’ve never really had to drain capital off the exchanges that we trade on and effectively stop trading on them just to be able to do something else.”Indeed, Baradwaj, who had been working alongside Ellison in Hong Kong at the time, said that until that point she had “seemed like a a kind person” and was a good manager.