The US government’s case against the co-founder of FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, has been complicated by the allegation that he attempted to bribe Chinese officials.
On Tuesday, the US prosecutors in Manhattan unsealed a revised indictment against Bankman-Fried, who is accused of authorizing a payment of $40 million to Chinese authorities in order to unfreeze accounts of Alameda Research, a Hong Kong-based trading firm associated with FTX, which contains over $1 billion in cryptocurrency.
The indictment states that the prosecutors assert that Bankman-Fried and others attempted to reclaim the funds in their Alameda accounts in 2021 to finance extra trading endeavors.
A request for comment from Bankman-Fried was not immediately answered by their representative.
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An indictment of thirteen people was issued by the US government
Bankman-Fried has been charged with conspiracy against the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and is currently facing 13 criminal indictments. He has already entered a plea of not guilty in regards to various fraud charges that were brought against him for allegedly transferring billions of dollars from the now-defunct FTX to Alameda as well as for personal use.
The government has received cooperation from Gary Wang, Caroline Ellison, and Nishad Singh, who are all close friends of the accused, and have pleaded guilty to fraud charges.
Bankman-Fried is being released under a $250 million bail agreement and is scheduled to appear in court come October. Last December, he was apprehended in the Bahamas, where his FTX crypto-empire was based, and afterwards was transferred back to the United States.
In February, a modified indictment was revealed that presented further campaign-finance related accusations against Bankman-Fried, who had formerly been a notable donor to Democratic political campaigns. The prosecutor contended that Bankman-Fried and other FTX members had conspired to sway US crypto regulation through donations.
The U.S. Department of Justice is poised to release new charges related to the Bankman-Fried case, alleging a conspiracy to manipulate the policy surrounding cryptocurrencies. This news was reported by Bloomberg on February 23rd.
This year, Chinese law enforcement took action by freezing Alameda’s accounts on two of the nation’s most prominent crypto exchanges as part of an investigation into a counter-party, according to the current indictment.
Bankman-Fried and those he was leading made efforts to unlock the accounts, which included hiring lawyers to persuade the Chinese government to free the crypto assets and attempting to move the digital currency to bogus accounts registered on a Chinese trading platform.
For many months, prosecutors state, Bankman-Fried commanded a bribe in the shape of cryptocurrency to be moved from Alameda’s primary trading account to a private one. Later, the accounts were opened again and Bankman-Fried gave the go-ahead for the rest of the bribe to be shifted.
In US District Court for the Southern District of New York (Manhattan), US v. Bankman-Fried is the case number 22-cr-673.
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