FTX co-founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas Monday, based on charges filed in the U.S. The federal charges, unsealed Tuesday morning, include multiple counts of wire fraud and conspiracy related to the collapse of his cryptocurrency exchange.
Bankman-Fried was previously scheduled to testify today at a Congressional hearing on FTX’s collapse. But after his arrest in the Bahamas, he is awaiting a potential extradition. A statement from the Bahamas attorney general’s office said the US is likely to seek extradition and that the Bahamas intends to process the expected extradition request “promptly, pursuant to Bahamian law and its treaty obligations with the United States.”
FTX was one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges before it collapsed last month. Users withdrew roughly $5 billion of crypto assets in a single day as concerns mounted over the exchange’s solvency. Bankman-Fried resigned on November 11 and FTX filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
John Ray III, who took over as FTX CEO after a long career that included overseeing the Enron bankruptcy, said in court documents the following week, “Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here.”
