Sam Bankman-Fried arrested in the Bahamas as criminal charges loom
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.
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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”.
It is as yet unclear whether his appearance will go ahead following the arrest. The committee will also 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.
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.
