Nine days after being arrested in the Bahamas on a handful of criminal charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried is heading back to the United States to face them.
Bankman-Fried was being held in the Bahamas Department of Correctional Services’ Fox Hill jail after being denied bail and was supposed to remain there until his next hearing on February 8, 2023. But he could now arrive in New York as soon as Wednesday afternoon to be arraigned in the Federal District Court in Manhattan, according to numerous reports.
The charges came after Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange, which was once one of the largest globally, collapsed last month as a liquidity crisis unfolded and the company withheld withdrawals. The allegations include wire fraud, securities fraud and money laundering.
Bankman-Fried signed documents on Tuesday surrendering himself to the U.S., according to Bahamas Acting Commissioner of Corrections Doan Cleare. He’s expected to sign a separate group of documents finalizing his waiver of rights to fight extradition to the U.S. at Nassau’s Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday.
According to Bloomberg News, Bankman-Fried will be brought back to the U.S. on a private plane alongside FBI agents. Plans call for him to go from the prison to court Wednesday morning.
His arrival in the U.S. could expedite both prosecutors and legislators alike to dive deeper into the FTX collapse and uncover what truly happened to the once-valued $32 billion company.
Last week, when asked whether the entities will bring charges against other individuals allegedly involved in the FTX collapse, Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said during the event, “I can only say this: Clearly, we are not done.” There haven’t been any new charges announced since.
On December 13, the U.S. House Financial Services Committee held a hearing on the FTX collapse with one witness: new FTX CEO John J. Ray III. During the four-hour hearing, Ray answered a number of questions from government officials and shared some new information around the situation, which you can read about here.
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