Former FTX CEO Bankman-Fried arrested in Bahamas, US to unveil charges

SAM Bankman-Fried, who founded and led FTX until a liquidity crunch forced the cryptocurrency exchange to declare bankruptcy last month, was arrested on Monday in The Bahamas after being criminally charged by US prosecutors.
It 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 US$26.5 billion.
The exchange, launched in 2019 and based in The Bahamas, filed for bankruptcy on Nov 11 after it struggled to raise money to stave off collapse as traders rushed to withdraw US$6 billion from the platform in just 72 hours.
The attorney general’s office for The Bahamas said it proceeded with the arrest after receiving formal confirmation of charges against Bankman-Fried, adding it expects he will be extradited to the United States.
A statement from The Bahamas Police said Bankman-Fried had been arrested shortly after 6.00 pm Monday (2300 GMT) at his apartment complex, located in Albany, Nassau, in The Bahamas.
“He was arrested reference to various Financial Offences against laws of the United States, which are also offences against laws of the Commonwealth of The Bahamas,” the statement said, adding he was taken into custody without incident and will appear in Nassau’s Magistrate Court on Tuesday.
A spokesman for the US Attorney’s office in Manhattan confirmed Bankman-Fried had been arrested in The Bahamas but declined to comment on the charges.
“Earlier this evening, Bahamian authorities arrested Samuel Bankman-Fried at the request of the US Government, based on a sealed indictment filed by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York,” United States prosecutor Damian Williams said in a statement. “We expect to move to unseal the indictment in the morning and will have more to say at that time.”