- The Metropolitan Museum of Art has said it will return $550,000 worth of donations it received from FTX last year
- The museum received two donations in 2022 but it is honoring FTX’s request, sent in February
- FTX donated some $93 million to charities and politicians between 2020 and 2022
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has said it will return $550,000 worth of donations it received from FTX last year, following negotiations with creditor group FTX Debtors. A court filing from June 2 revealed that the museum, which received the donations in two parts in March and May of 2022, has agreed to return the funds which will go towards paying off the exchange’s creditors. The two donations represent a fraction of the total that FTX made in charitable and political donations during its active years, with the latter proving harder to retrieve.
FTX Made $93 Million in Donations
FTX made two contributions to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art last year, donating around $300,000 in March 2022 and another $250,000 in May, six months before the exchange collapsed into insolvency.
The exchange and its CEO Sam Bankman-Fried famously made multiple political donations on top of charitable ones, with court documents showing that the exchange donated approximately $93 million to 180 US politicians on both sides of the House between March 2020 and November 2022.
IRS Chasing FTX for $44 Billion
This February the exchange began attempts to claw this money back and return it to the creditors’ pot, which stands at some $10 billion, saying that it was “sending confidential messages to political figures, political action funds, and other recipients of contributions or other payments that were made by or at the direction of the FTX Debtors, Samuel Bankman-Fried or other officers or principals of the FTX Debtors.” Some politicians have handed back their donations while others are proving harder to convince.
While $93 million, and $550,000 come to that, might seem like a drop in the ocean, given that the IRS is chasing FTX for some $44 billion in unpaid taxes the exchange is looking for every penny it can get its hands back on.
