At a press conference this week, the flustered Attorney-General of the Bahamas, Ryan Pinder defended his country’s regulatory oversight of Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX.
Mr Pinder who is also a Senator and Head of Legal Affairs said, ‘look, I messed up, because I was very BUSY, Ok? Being ‘Attorney-General’ has a lot of responsibilities. As does ‘being a Senator’ and ‘being Head of Legal Affairs.’ So it’s easy to overlook things.’
When asked why he did THREE high-profile jobs, he explained: ‘We have a small population here, not enough people to go round, which means I have to do a lot of jobs. Like, a lot.’
Should he not have noticed what was going on at FTX?
‘Well, in theory, yes. But the warning signs started one morning when I was doing one of my other government jobs… as a crossing guard at a local school. So I missed them.
‘Then I had to go and drive a pensioners’ bus until midday, and over my lunch hour I had to be a traffic warden. In which capacity I ironically had to give myself a ticket for parking the pensioners’ bus incorrectly. And I guess that was when SBF was acting dodgily.’
The under pressure official admitted he was maybe taking on too much.
‘I wear a lot of different hats… and as I’m also chief hat-maker for the Bahamas, I’m basically trapped in a bit of a doom-loop with every new role I take on. It’s not ideal… but if you keep criticising me for it, I’ll make sure you nosy journalist types suffer. I can either arrest you in my capacity as chief of police or just conduct a combined arms military assault on you… because I’m also the entire Bahamian army, air force and navy.’
Refusing to take any more questions, Mr Pinder then left the press conference, heading for a private engagement: ‘I’m going to have dinner with my wife… who, I’ll admit, is actually just me putting on a wig and dress and moving over to the other side of the table every couple of minutes.’