Here he is extradited. The founder and former boss of the FTX cryptocurrency trading platform, Sam Bankman-Fried, arrived in New York on the evening of December 21. He must appear before a judge in the next few hours, according to several American media.
“SBF”, his nickname, “will be conducted directly into the southern district of [l’Etat de] New York “jurisdiction that includes Manhattan, after arriving, “and he will be brought before a judge as soon as possible”Manhattan federal prosecutor Damian Williams had earlier announced, in a video posted on Twitter.
Earlier Wednesday, Sam Bankman-Fried agreed to be extradited to the United States during a hearing in Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas. He shared his “desire to ensure affected customers get their money back”according to Wall Street Journal.
The Manhattan federal prosecutor also revealed on Wednesday that two key figures in the case had been charged. The latter have pleaded guilty and are collaborating with the government, which means that they could incriminate Sam Bankman-Fried. They are Caroline Ellison, former boss of the company Alameda Research, and Gary Wang, co-founder of FTX, charged “in connection with their role in the fraud that contributed to the collapse of FTX”said Damian Williams, without giving more details.
Asked by Agence France-Presse about the charges, the Manhattan federal prosecutor’s office did not follow up. According to Wall Street Journal, both were charged with fraud, while only Caroline Ellison was charged with criminal association.
The main decision maker
Alameda Research is the company that Sam Bankman-Fried used, according to the indictment, to carry out risky transactions with billions of dollars in funds deposited by clients on the FTX platform, without their being aware of it informed.
Arrested on December 12 in Nassau, Sam Bankman-Fried was already in detention in the Bahamas.
Since the bankruptcy of FTX on November 11, Sam Bankman-Fried has repeatedly argued publicly that he had not been at the helm of Alameda Research for several months, indirectly incriminating Caroline Ellison. An argument disputed by the public prosecutor, who claims that “SBF” remained the main decision-maker within Alameda until FTX filed for bankruptcy.
During the first hearing in Manhattan, the New York magistrate in charge of the case will read him the charges against him and ask him whether or not he wishes to plead guilty. She will then decide whether or not Sam Bankman-Fried should be released on bail.
He faces life imprisonment
If he is kept in detention, pending his trial, he should be sent to the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, decried for its lack of staff and questionable management of detainees.
Besides risky transactions through Alameda, Sam Bankman-Fried is also suspected of having invested some of this money in real estate in the Bahamas. He is also accused of having made donations to Democratic politicians – always from funds from FTX clients – including Joe Biden during his presidential campaign.
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Five of the eight charges against him each provide for a maximum sentence of twenty years in prison. The one who has long been seen as an iconoclastic genius of cryptocurrencies is therefore likely to spend the rest of his life in prison.
Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang have also been summoned to civil justice by the two main American financial market regulators, the SEC and the CFTC. They pledged to cooperate with the SEC, and acknowledged the facts attributed to them by the CFTC, which should earn them, in both cases, a more lenient judgment. The CFTC estimates the total amount of funds misappropriated from FTX client accounts to be $8 billion (7.5 billion euros).