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- FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried paid bribes worth tens of millions of dollars to at least one Chinese government official, federal prosecutors said Tuesday in a new indictment.
- The federal government claims Bankman-Fried’s hedge fund Alameda Research accounts were subject to a freeze order by Chinese police around November 2021.
- The indictment also alleges that Bankman-Fried and others “directed and caused the transfer” of at least $40 million in cryptocurrency.
Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, who was indicted on fraud charges over the bankruptcy of the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange, on January 3, 2023, the day of his hearing in Manhattan federal court in New York City. arrives.
David Dee Delgado | Reuters
FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried paid bribes worth tens of millions of dollars to at least one Chinese government official, federal prosecutors said Tuesday in a new indictment.
The federal government claims accounts belonging to Bankman-Fried hedge fund Alameda Research were subject to a freeze order from Chinese police “around November 2021.” Any transfer of at least $40 million in virtual currency to unfreeze these accounts “in order to influence one or more Chinese government officials to induce them to unfreeze these accounts.” was intended.
Bankman-Fried and his associates considered and tried “many methods” to unfreeze accounts that contained about $1 billion worth of cryptocurrency, prosecutors claim. increase. Ultimately, after both legal and personal efforts failed, Bankman-Fried agreed and directed multi-million dollar bribes to unlock frozen accounts, prosecutors said. claims.
Bankman-Fried’s hedge fund will continue to fund Alameda’s loss-making transactions using unfrozen assets for another year of what the government claims is a fraud against customers and investors. I was. FTX and Alameda collapsed in November 2022 after balance sheet concerns turned into a bank crackdown. Bankman-Fried is currently facing federal indictments and civil lawsuits from both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
The indictment shows that the federal government has obtained new evidence about Bankman-Fried’s international trading, leading to U.S. regulators accusing cryptocurrency exchange Binance of facilitating terrorist financing and violating U.S. derivatives laws. A day after I slapped you in
Meanwhile, Bankman-Fried’s defunct FTX remains bogged down in Delaware bankruptcy court proceedings.
CNBC reached out to a Bankman-Fried spokesperson but did not hear back immediately.
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