International
FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried Arrested
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried has been arrested.
Eko Hot Blog reports that the founder of collapsed cryptocurrency exchnage FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, was arrested in The Bahamas late Monday evening.
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The United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York made the disclosure in a tweet early Tuesday morning.
USA Damian Williams: Earlier this evening, Bahamian authorities arrested Samuel Bankman-Fried at the request of the U.S. Government, based on a sealed indictment filed by the SDNY. We expect to move to unseal the indictment in the morning and will have more to say at that time.
— US Attorney SDNY (@SDNYnews) December 12, 2022
Damian Williams, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said the arrest was made after his office shared a sealed indictment with the Bahamian government.
The move set the the stage for extradition and US trial for the onetime crypto billionaire at the heart of the crypto exchange’s collapse.
Williams said that the federal government anticipated moving to “unseal the indictment in the morning.”
Bahamas Attorney General Ryan Pinder said that the United States was “likely to request his extradition.”
In a statement, Bahamian Prime Minister Philip Davis said, “The Bahamas and the United States have a shared interest in holding accountable all individuals associated with FTX who may have betrayed the public trust and broken the law.
“While the United States is pursuing criminal charges against SBF individually, The Bahamas will continue its own regulatory and criminal investigations into the collapse of FTX, with the continued cooperation of its law enforcement and regulatory partners in the United States and elsewhere.”
Bankman-Fried was expected to testify before the House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday. His arrest is the first concrete move by regulators to hold individuals accountable for the multi-billion dollar implosion of FTX in November.
Last month, FTX and its affiliates filed for bankruptcy and Bankman-Fried stepped down from his role as CEO.
FURTHER READING
Reports later claimed that FTX had commingled customer funds with Bankman-Fried’s crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research, and that billions in customer deposits had been lost along the way.
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