Archegos' Bill Hwang deserves 21 years in prison, US says
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Archegos' Bill Hwang deserves 21 years in prison, US says
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Bill Hwang, the founder of Archegos Capital Management, should spend 21 years in prison for running a market manipulation scheme that wiped out his $36 billion firm and cost its lenders more than $10 billion, federal prosecutors said on Friday.
In a late night court filing, prosecutors from the US Attorney's office in Manhattan also asked that Hwang be subjected to a $12.35 billion forfeiture and to pay restitution to victims at his scheduled sentencing on Wednesday.
A 21-year term would be unusually long for a US white-collar crime case, and just four years shorter than FTX cryptocurrency exchange founder Sam Bankman-Fried received in March after being convicted of stealing billions of dollars from customers.
Prosecutors called Hwang an "unrepentant recidivist" who appears to have "judged himself blameless."
They cited a 2012 guilty plea to wire fraud by Hwang's former hedge fund Tiger Asia Management, and a Nov. 8 request by Hwang's lawyers that their 60-year-old client spend no time in prison for his activities at Archegos.
"Bill Hwang used his personal hedge fund to commit a fraud that altered the American stock market and visited billions of dollars in losses on his trading counterparties," prosecutors said. "He pursued that fraud even after previously being ordered not to commit securities fraud. And even now he has no remorse."
A significant sentence, prosecutors added, would "signal to even the most hubristic investors that their grand schemes will be met with serious sentences."
