Dec 28th 2022

Arrest just 24 hours before founder of cryptocurrency exchange was to testify before US Congress

The Bahamas police have arrested former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, the country’s attorney general said in a statement on Monday, adding that the Bahamas has received formal notification from the US of criminal charges against him.

Sam Bankman-Fried has been arrested. What happens next to the FTX founder?

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Bankman-Fried is expected to be extradited to the US, the attorney general’s office for the Bahamas told Reuters, but declined to comment on what the charges were.

In a statement released on Twitter, Damian Williams, the US attorney for the southern district of New York, confirmed Bankman-Fried’s arrest and said the related indictment would be unsealed on Tuesday morning. “[We] will have more to say at that time,” he said.

The former CEO had been expected on Tuesday to make his first public appearance since FTX’s collapse before US lawmakers. Bankman-Fried, who has been vocal throughout the collapse of FTX on his Twitter account and in public media appearances, was tweeting just hours before his arrest.

Earlier in the day, he had said he would be “calling in” to the hearing before the House financial services committee from the Bahamas. In a Twitter Spaces event on Monday with Twitter account Unusual Whales, Bankman-Fried said it was difficult for him “to move right now and travel because the paparazzi effect is quite large”.

In a statement, Congresswoman Maxine Waters who chairs the committee said she was disappointed Bankman-Fried would not be appearing at the hearing tomorrow.

“Although Mr Bankman-Fried must be held accountable, the American public deserves to hear directly from Mr Bankman-Fried about the actions that’ve harmed over one million people, and wiped out the hard-earned life savings of so many,” she said. “The public has been waiting eagerly to get these answers under oath before Congress, and the timing of this arrest denies the public this opportunity.”

Waters said the committee would still hear from John Ray III, FTX’s new chief executive. Ray, a veteran bankruptcy expert who also oversaw the aftermath of the collapsed energy giant Enron, has called FTX an “unprecedented and complete failure of corporate controls” the likes of which he has not witnessed in his 40-year career.

In prepared testimony seen by Reuters, Bankman-Fried said he was pressured into nominating Ray as chief executive in early November by lawyers who were advising his firm at the time. He said shortly thereafter he received a “potential funding offer for billions of dollars to help make customers whole”, but that it was too late to rescind the move.

FTX filed for US bankruptcy protection last month and Bankman-Fried resigned as chief executive, triggering a wave of public demands for greater regulation of the cryptocurrency industry.

The distressed crypto trading platform struggled to raise money to stave off collapse as traders rushed to withdraw $6bn from the platform in just 72 hours and rival exchange Binance abandoned a proposed rescue deal.

In recent weeks, US authorities have sought information from investors and potential investors in FTX, two sources with knowledge of the requests told Reuters. The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission also opened probes.

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