Inside the US bankruptcy system, there existed a frustrating and often frustrated character called the trustee. Employed by the US Department of Justice, the trustee was meant to serve as a check on the insiders who profited from the bankruptcy. (And who controlled the evidence for any criminal cases.) But the only power the trustee had been given by law was the power to bitch and moan to the bankruptcy judge, himself usually a former bankruptcy lawyer. The US Trustee assigned to the FTX case, Andrew Vara, had written a strongly worded letter to the judge, John T. Dorsey, arguing that Sullivan
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