EXCLUSIVE: Sam Bankman-Fried Arrested in the Bahamas
Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, has been arrested in the Bahamas, the island's Attorney General's Office stated on Monday.
The arrest “followed an official notification from the United States that they have filed criminal charges against Sam Bankman-Fried and will likely seek his extradition”, according to the authorities.
In a statement, U.S. Attorney Damien Williams said:
“Earlier this evening, Bahamian authorities arrested Sam Bankman-Fried at the request of the United States Government on the basis of a sealed indictment filed by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. We expect to file a motion to unseal the indictment in the morning and will have more information then.”
Responding to the announcement of the arrest, Bahamas Prime Minister Philip Davis said, “The Bahamas and the United States have a shared interest in bringing to justice all people associated with FTX who may have betrayed the public trust and violated the law.”
USA Damian Williams: Earlier this evening, Bahamian authorities arrested Samuel Bankman-Fried at the request of the U.S. Government, based on a sealed indictment filed by the SDNY. We expect to move to unseal the indictment in the morning and will have more to say at that time.
— US Attorney SDNY (@SDNYnews) December 12, 2022
FTX, the crypto exchange that was at one time worth $32 billion, filed for bankruptcy in November after rival cryptocurrency exchange Binance announced it was abandoning the plan to acquire it.
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Bankman-Fried was expected to appear before Congress on Tuesday to testify before the House of Representatives’ Financial Services Committee in a hearing titled “Investigation of the FTX Failure, Part 1.” John Ray, the new FTX CEO who is leading the company through the bankruptcy proceedings, will also testify.
In a series of tweets, Bankman-Fried said he was “ready to testify” after initially opposing the committee’s request.
Alexander Stefanov
Reporter at CoinsPress
Alex is Editor-in-Chief of Coinspress and co-founder of Millennial Media Group, with nearly a decade of experience covering financial markets - crypto first, then everything else. It started in 2016 with Bitcoin. Like most people at the time, he didn't fully understand it - so he kept digging. Blockchain, tokenomics, the projects, the cycles. That curiosity never stopped, and eventually pulled him into traditional markets too: equities, commodities, macro. Not because he left crypto behind, but because you can't properly understand one without the other. What drives him is straightforward: he wants to know why something is happening, not just that it's happening. Most market coverage stops at the headline - price up, price down, here's a chart. Alex finds that kind of reporting actively unhelpful. If you walk away from an article without understanding the mechanism behind the move, what did you actually learn? He holds a degree in Tourism from New Bulgarian University - not the most obvious path into financial markets, but markets have a way of pulling in people who are simply too curious to stay out. He has authored over 200 in-depth analyses and more than 10,000 articles across crypto and traditional finance. He still thinks every day in markets teaches him something new. That's probably why he hasn't stopped.
