Sam Bankman-Fried, founder and former CEO of the failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, has been arrested in the Bahamas at the request of the US government a day before he was due to testify before congress, newswires said Tuesday.
The news marks a stunning fall from grace for the 30-year-old entrepreneur widely known by his initials SBF, who rode a boom in Bitcoin and other digital assets until FTX's collapse last month.
The exchange, launched in 2019 and based in the Bahamas, filed for bankruptcy on November 11 when it ran out of money after the cryptocurrency equivalent of a bank run. Since then it emerged Bankman-Fried secretly used $10 billion (€9.5 billion) in customer funds to prop up his trading business.
Bankman-Fried was arrested on Monday after the US filed criminal charges that are expected to be unsealed on Tuesday, according to US Attorney Damian Williams.
Bahamian Attorney General Ryan Pinder said the Bahamas would “promptly” extradite Bankman-Fried to the US once the indictment is unsealed and US authorities make a formal request.
FTX is headquartered in the Bahamas and Bankman-Fried has largely remained in his Bahamian luxury compound in Nassau since the company's failure.
A spokesman for Bankman-Fried had no comment on Monday evening. Bankman-Fried has a right to contest his extradition, which could delay but not likely stop his transfer to the US.
Bankman-Fried was one of the world’s wealthiest people on paper, with an estimated net worth of $32 billion (€30 billion). He was a prominent personality in Washington, donating millions of dollars toward mostly left-leaning political causes and Democratic political campaigns.
FTX grew to become the second-largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world.
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