Hours before he was scheduled to testify before Congress, Sam Bankman Fried (SBF), was detained in the Bahamas by U.S. authorities on U.S. charges allegedly connected with the utter collapse of his cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Investors lost billions of dollars.
Expect the charges to be announced as soon as Tuesday, but could be released later this week.
According to the U.S. Attorney, the arrest was based on a sealed Indictment by the United States Attorney’s Office Southern District of New York. U.S. Attorney Damian Williams stated that they expect to move to unseal the indictment by morning and would have more to share at that time.
The United States is likely to request Mr. Bankman-Fried’s extradition, according to a release issued by the Bahamas attorney general. He will be held in custody by Bahamian police pursuant to the country’s extradition law, the release says.
The Wall Street Journal reported that officials from Bahamian were open to helping the U.S. return SBF to the U.S.
In a statement, Philip Davis, Bahamian Prime Minister, stated that the United States and the Bahamas have a common interest in holding accountable any individuals involved with FTX who might have betrayed the public trust and violated the law.
SBF failed to pay $40 million in the 2022 election cycles to Democrat politicians.
This is a great business plan.
CAUGHT: Maxine Waters appears to blow a kiss at FTX’s chief fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried at a Congressional hearing while the cameras were still rolling
She’s the one who’s supposed to grill SBF next month?
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) November 18, 2022
SBF was scheduled to appear remotely before Maxine Waters’s committee before she turned in her gavel. Democrats lost the House and their committee gavels in the November elections.
However, SBF said he said he was “quite overbooked” and couldn’t fire up the PJ in time to testify.
Bankman-Fried, during Monday’s interview on Twitter Spaces with “Unusual Whales”, confirmed that he would testify. However, he did so via Zoom from his luxurious Bahamas home.
Bankman-Fried is on a whirlwind media trip to defend his actions following FTX’s bankruptcy filing on Nov. 11. When asked why he wouldn’t fly to the House hearing, Bankman-Fried replied that he was “quite overbooked.”
Waters was unsure whether to have the “businessman” of Bernie Madoff’s level testify before her committee. He declined to be subpoenaed to testify before her committee.
SBF went on a media shame-spiral tour in order to discuss his business failures which look like a Ponzi scheme.