Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of the FTX platform accused of fraud and fraud, faces extradition requests from the United States and would return to the country from the Bahamas, where he is currently. The young man would have agreed to return on the condition of knowing the official accusation against him.
According to the Reuters agency, Bankman-Fried’s legal team said that he “wants to fix things with the clients and that is what has driven his decision.” They added that they plan to prepare the necessary documents for him to appear before the Bahamas Magistrates Court sometime this week.
Bankman-Fried attended court without any judgment or decision, after which he returned to Fox Hill Prison. The judge would have abruptly suspended the hearing in which the founder of the FTX cryptocurrency platform was expected to give up objecting to his extradition to the United States.
The former CEO faces charges brought by the Department of Justice, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and the Securities and Exchange Commission related to fraud, wire fraud, fraudulent mismanagement of investors and lenders, as well as violations of the campaign finance laws. If he pleads guilty, he would accumulate nearly 115 years in prison.
On December 12, he was detained by authorities on the island of the Bahamas. Local security forces detained him as part of extradition proceedings with the United States, following a request from the Southern District of New York. It is also being considered that he will present himself to a hearing in the Congress of that country.
A week ago, Bankman-Fried’s lawyers initially said they planned to fight the extradition. The extradition hearing was scheduled for February 8. The change of heart could speed up the process of his return to the United States.
If transferred to New York, Bankman-Fried is likely to be held, at least temporarily, in a federal detention center in Brooklyn, according to the AP agency. Other famous inmates at the Metropolitan Detention Center in recent years have been singer and sex offender R. Kelly; the executive of a pharmaceutical company, Martin Shkrelli; and the socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, sentenced for helping the millionaire Jeffrey Epstein.
Once back in the United States, Bankman-Fried’s lawyer will be able to request his release on bail. Last week, another judge in the Bahamas denied the young man’s bail request for flight risk.
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accused Bankman-Fried of “orchestrating a massive, years-long fraud, diverting billions of dollars of platform client funds for their own personal gain and to help to grow his crypto empire,” US prosecutors said.
John Ray III, the new CEO of the FTX exchange, has hired a financial forensics team to find the billions of dollars missing from the cryptocurrency giant’s crash. According to the Reuters agency, it is a total loss of about US$8 billion. Now, the new leadership wants to “locate” them through an outsourced investigation.