U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel in Manhattan granted a
Justice Department motion to stay the lawsuits filed by the Securities and
Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Prosecutors said it made sense to delay those lawsuits
because the cases substantially overlapped, and the outcome of the criminal
case would likely affect what issues remained in the civil cases.
They also cited the risk that Bankman-Fried could gather evidence
in the civil cases to improperly impeach government witnesses, circumvent
discovery rules in criminal cases, and tailor his criminal defense.
Bankman-Fried consented to putting the civil cases on hold.
Stays of SEC and CFTC lawsuits are common when the Justice
Department files parallel criminal cases.
Bankman-Fried, 30, has been free on $250 million bond and
living in Palo Alto, California, with his parents since pleading not guilty to
looting billions of dollars from FTX. Another Manhattan federal judge, Lewis
Kaplan, oversees that case.