At the request of the US authorities, the former boss of the crypto-currency platform FTX was arrested on Monday 12 December in the Bahamas, where he lives.
Sam Bankman-Fried, the former head of the FTX platform, was arrested in the Bahamas yesterday at the request of US authorities, Damian Williams, a New York prosecutor, has revealed. Rather unknown to the general public despite its huge spending on sports sponsorship, FTX was one of the world’s largest crypto platforms.
The United States has decided to “press charges” against the former executive and “will likely seek his extradition,” Bahamian Attorney General Ryan Pinder said in a statement posted on Twitter.
The crypto-currency exchange, considered at the time to be one of the safest on the planet, went bankrupt in early November within days of one of its competitors, Binance, the industry leader, deciding to withdraw its funds. It was then discovered that FTX was lending its clients’ funds to Alameda, a Bahamas-based company controlled by Sam Bankman-Fried, which had embarked on risky speculative bets. Bankman-Fried, taking advantage of the particularly flexible regulations in the Bahamas, had helped himself to a personal loan of 1 billion dollars, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The investigation has already shown that assets deposited by clients on FTX were commingled with those of Alameda, which allegedly dipped into FTX clients’ funds to make risky bets. Such use of these funds would constitute fraud if it was not in accordance with the terms established between FTX and its customers, many legal experts believe.
“The collapse of the FTX group appears to be the result of the absolute concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of grossly inexperienced and unsophisticated individuals,” said John Ray, FTX’s new boss.
Sam Bankman-Fried has been making a string of media appearances over the past month, despite the risk of a fraud lawsuit after the company, which was valued at $32bn earlier this year, imploded. He was due to appear before a House of Representatives committee on Tuesday. “I never tried to defraud anyone,” he said in late November at a conference organised by the New York Times. “I’ve clearly made a lot of mistakes and I would give anything to be able to do some things again,” he also admitted.
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Featured photo : © Youtube/ FTX
