After losing $32 billion, the arrest of the former head of digital currency platform FTX

The New York Attorney General announced that the Bahamas authorities have arrested, at the request of the US judiciary, the former CEO of digital currency platform “FTX” Sam Bankman-Fred after the collapse of his company.

“Earlier tonight, Samuel Bankman-Freed was arrested by the Bahamas at the request of the US Government and pursuant to a sealed indictment filed by the Southern District of New York,” Attorney General Damian Williams tweeted. The Prosecutor General said that new details on this case will be announced on Tuesday.

A month ago, banker Fred continued to participate in interviews with media from the Bahamas, despite the risk of being held liable for financial fraud after his company, which was valued at $ 32 billion at the beginning of the year, went bankrupt overnight. For his part, Ryan Bender, Attorney General of the Bahamas, said in a statement posted on Twitter that the United States “has filed a complaint” against the 30-year-old man and “probably will demand that we extradite him.”

Philip Davis, Prime Minister of the Kingdom of the Bahamas, an archipelago northeast of Cuba, said both the United States and his country “have an interest in holding accountable individuals associated with FTX who may have betrayed public trust and violated law”. law.” In a statement, he added that his country would conduct its own “criminal investigation into the collapse of FTX.”

Recently, Bankman-Fried said he was “shocked” by many of the details that were revealed when the cryptocurrency platform collapsed, stressing that the problems stemmed from lax oversight and controls within the company and not from any fraudulent intent. On Nov. 11, FTX filed for bankruptcy after facing severe liquidity shortages and a flood of withdrawals from panicked customers. According to the Wall Street Journal, at the time, FTX took approximately $10 billion in customer funds without authorization. Much attention has been focused on the relationship between the company and Alameda Research, its trading subsidiary. Bankman-Freed admitted that he was “embarrassed” that he did not pay due attention to conflicts of interest between the two companies, but insisted that he was not familiar with the details of Alameda and did not take over the management of the company. According to Coindesk, a cryptocurrency news site, Alameda’s balance is heavily dependent on FTX-created cryptocurrency, which is not pegged to any independent asset, FTT.