The group emphasized that publicly disclosing customers’ names and private information risks identity theft, targeted attacks, and “other injury.”
As part of the crypto exchange’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy process, a group of non-US FTX customers is attempting to have their names and private information redacted from court documents.
The “Ad Hoc Committee of Non-US Customers of FTX.com” (Ad Hoc Committee) emphasized in a Dec. 28 joinder filing that publicly disclosing customers’ names and private information risks identity theft, targeted attacks, and “other injury.”
“Requiring the Debtors to reveal the names and other identifying information of the FTX.com customers to the general public would cause irreparable harm, further victimizing the FTX.com customers whose assets were misappropriated.”
The group is made up of 15 individuals or representatives, implying that there is a much larger number in the group. The Ad Hoc Committee claims to represent approximately $1.9 billion in locked assets in FTX.com.
A joinder is a type of court filing in which several suits are joined together or an additional party is attached to another filing.
In this case, the Ad Hoc Committee is acting on the “Motion of Debtors for Entry of Interim and Final Orders,” which seeks, among other things, to withhold confidential customer information.
“The Ad Hoc Committee submits this Joinder in support of the Redaction Motion’s request to redact names and other identifying information of FTX.com customers from any paper filed or made publicly available in these proceedings, including the Creditor Matrix, Consolidated Top 50 Creditors List, and Schedules and Statements,” according to the filing.
However, on December 12, the U.S. Trustee filed an objection to the original motion, arguing that keeping information private could jeopardize the transparency of FTX’s chapter 11 bankruptcy process and that the public had a “general right of access to judicial records.”
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), The New York Times, Bloomberg, and the Financial Times have even requested in court that the information be made public, citing that this is typically what happens in these types of bankruptcy procedures. “Bankruptcy courts normally require transparency into the affairs of troubled businesses, including their creditors, in exchange for the protections of chapter 11,” WSJ journalist Andrew Scurria wrote on Dec. 29.
A similar incident occurred in Celsius’s chapter 11 bankruptcy in October, with court documents revealing private information about thousands of customers, much to the chagrin of the crypto community.
