PM DEFENDS REGULATORY REGIME WHILE SPEAKING IN WASHINGTON
NASSAU, Bahamas — Addressing a forum in Washington, D.C., yesterday, Prime Minister Philip E. Davis defended Bahamian regulators and declared that the legislative regime The Bahamas has in place “saved the day” for investors into the now-collapsed Bahamas-based FTX cryptocurrency exchange, The Nassau Guardian reported on Wednesday, January 18, in an article written by Executive Editor Candia Dames.
Davis, who delivered a speech to Atlantic Council, an American think tank, was asked what steps his country is taking to work with US regulatory bodies following the FTX failure and what some of the lessons are moving forward.
Davis did not point to any lessons learned, but said the “FTX challenge is nothing new”.
“There would have been collaboration between our regulatory bodies, between both countries before in other similar instances where banks collapsed back in the day and major multinational companies would have collapsed,” he said. “We would have cooperated in that area. The difference here is that we were in a different space, the crypto digital space. And fortunately, we do have a legislative regime that is in place.
“Our regulatory body worked very closely with the US regulatory bodies in all these, in various matters.
“They collaborate very often in matters of concern, that’s cross-border issues, and so when the FTX issue arose, it was because of our regulatory regime that allowed us to move quickly to preserve assets for participants in the FTX business and we were able to move quickly, more quickly than even the US, and I daresay that perhaps our regulatory regime in respect to this space is probably more modern than the US.
“And so, we would have found that the CEO that was appointed after the Chapter 11 filings eventually had to come around to accept that what we were doing, that what we had done, was appropriate and perhaps has saved the day for many of the investors in the FTX.”
The prime minister added, “We continue to work with our regulatory partners around the world to ensure, because, at the end of the day, the regulatory regime is to keep out bad actors, to protect investors and to ensure that the integrity of our jurisdiction maintains its probity.”
After weeks of verbal sparring, the Bahamian liquidators of FTX Digital Markets (the FTX entity incorporated in The Bahamas) and the new CEO of FTX’s US companies John Ray III reached an agreement on January 6 over access to data.
Public utterances of mistrust had been made by FTX’s lawyers in court, by Ray in the US Congress, and repeated on radio, news broadcasts and print media for weeks.
Though The Bahamas has faced strong criticism in many spheres on the FTX matter, the Davis administration has maintained the position that the strength of the country’s regulatory regime allowed it to respond appropriately after FTX imploded.
In his first public statements since the collapse of FTX, Davis said in the House of Assembly on November 16 that based on the analysis and understanding of the FTX liquidity crisis, “we have not identified any deficiencies in our regulatory framework that could have avoided this”.
See complete article in The Nassau Guardian at https://thenassauguardian.com/we-saved-the-day-for-ftx-investors/
