SAM BANKMAN-FRIED has been arrested in the Bahamas and is set to be “promptly” extradited to the US.
The disgraced former CEO of the crypto exchange platform FTX was seized upon by the Royal Bahamas Police Force shortly after the US filed criminal charges.
The 30-year-old, who was worth $26billion before his blockchain empire came crashing down, has been in hiding on the Caribbean island for the past four weeks.
A statement from the Bahamas Attorney General Ryan Pinder said: “As a result of the notification received and the material provided therewith, it was deemed appropriate for the Attorney General to seek SBF’s arrest and hold him in custody pursuant to our nation’s Extradition Act.
“At such time as a formal request for extradition is made, The Bahamas intends to process it promptly, pursuant to Bahamian law and its treaty obligations with the United States.”
His arrest comes exactly a month after FTX announced it was removing trading and withdrawal functionality, blocking hundreds of thousands of users from accessing their money.
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At least $1billion of client funds are thought to have gone missing after FTX filed for bankruptcy.
In what analysts have labelled a “Ponzi Scheme”, Bankman-Fried used users’ deposits to make risky investments via FTX’s sister company, Alameda.
It is currently unknown exactly what charges the US has filed against the exchange’s founder.
If he faces trial for wire or bank fraud, Bankman-Fried could face life in prison.
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Bahamas Prime Minister Philip Davis said his country and the US had a “shared interest” in ensuring justice was served to those who “may have betrayed the public trust and broken the law”.
He added the Bahamas were carrying out their own probes into the collapse of the crypto exchange.
“The Bahamas and the United States have a shared interest in holding accountable all individuals associated with FTX who may have betrayed the public trust and broken the law,” Mr Davis said.
“While the United States is pursuing criminal charges against SBF individually, The Bahamas will continue its own regulatory and criminal investigations into the collapse of FTX, with the continued cooperation of its law enforcement and regulatory partners in the United States and elsewhere.”
Bankman-Fried was arrested just hours before he had been due to give evidence in front of Congress.
He was set to be grilled virtually by members of the House Financial Services Committee after he refused to attend the heading in person.
Evidence was also meant to be heard from John J. Ray III, who took over as FTX CEO when Bankman-Fried quit following the firm’s bankrupt. It is unclear if he is still set to appear following the latest developments.
FTX was the fourth largest crypto exchange in the world and its collapse led to billions of dollars being wiped off the value of cryptocurrencies as a whole.
The combined market cap of all tokens dropped below $1trillion.
Bankman-Fried said after FTX’s collapse that he “never tried to commit fraud” but admitted he made “a lot of mistakes”.
“I was failing to pay nearly enough attention to positions and positional risk on the exchange,” he said.
“I substantially underestimated what the scale and speed of the market crash would look like.”
