FTX suffered a “complete failure of corporate controls” that culminated in an “unprecedented debacle,” its new chief executive officer said at the end of this week. John J. Ray, who has helped oversee some of the biggest bankruptcies ever, including Enron’s, said in a filing to federal bankruptcy court that he has never seen anything as bad in 40 years of restructuring firms.
“Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here,” Mr. Ray said in the filing. “From compromised systems integrity and faulty regulatory oversight abroad, to the concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of inexperienced, unsophisticated and potentially compromised individuals, this situation is unprecedented.”