FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried arrested in Bahamas

Bahamas Attorney-General Ryan Pinder has announced the arrest of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried by the country’s police.

Pinder’s office added that the country has received formal notification from the United States of criminal charges against Bankman-Fried.

“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,” the office of The Bahamas Attorney General Ryan Pinder said.

He was due to testify on Tuesday before Congress about the abrupt failure last month of one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges.

The arrest marks a stunning fall from grace for the 30-year-old entrepreneur who rode a cryptocurrency boom to create one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges and a net worth that Forbes pegged a year ago at $26.5 billion US.

In a series of interviews and public appearances in late November and December, Bankman-Fried acknowledged risk management failures but sought to distance himself from accusations of fraud, saying he never knowingly commingled customer funds on FTX with funds at his proprietary trading firm, Alameda Research.

FTX, launched in 2019 and based in the Bahamas, filed for bankruptcy Nov. 11 after it struggled to raise money to stave off collapse as traders rushed to withdraw $6 billion from the platform in just 72 hours.

“I didn’t ever try to commit fraud,” Bankman-Fried said in a Nov. 30 interview at the New York Times’ Dealbook Summit, adding he doesn’t personally think he has any criminal liability.

U.S. prosecutors in Manhattan said they had a sealed indictment against Bankman-Fried and charges would be revealed on Tuesday. The New York Times reported Bankman-Fried faces charges fraud and money laundering charges.