Authorities in The Bahamas have detained Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder and former CEO of the FTX crypto exchange and the founder of the trading business Alameda Research.
According to a Dec. 12 statement from the Bahamas Attorney General (AG) and Minister of Legal Affairs, Ryan Pinder, Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested by the Royal Bahamas Police Force following formal notification from the US government that criminal charges have been brought against the FTX founder.
The United States will almost certainly request Bankman-Fried’s extradition according to Pinder. Any extradition request from US authorities will be processed “promptly” by the Bahamas.
In a statement, Bahamas Prime Minister Philip Davis stated that both countries had a “common interest in holding accountable all people affiliated with FTX who may have violated the public trust and broken the law.”
According to a tweet from the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York on December 12, officials in The Bahamas arrested Bankman-Fried based on a sealed indictment that the office planned to unseal “in the morning.”
The allegations against Bankman-Fried include wire and securities fraud, conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, and money laundering, according to a December 12 story in The New York Times quoting a person with knowledge of the situation.
Bloomberg reported on December 10 that New York prosecutors, FBI agents, and other authorities met with FTX’s lawyers to discuss the documentation they seek to collect.
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) was “closely” investigating whether FTX fraudulently transferred hundreds of millions of dollars around the time the company declared bankruptcy on November 11.
As Pinder stated on Nov. 27, Bahamian officials were conducting their own “active and ongoing” investigation into FTX, which included the country’s Securities Commission, the Financial Intelligence Unit, and the police’s financial crimes unit.
The arrest of Bankman-Fried comes just a day before he was scheduled to appear remotely before the House Committee on Financial Services in a hearing investigating the collapse of the exchange.
