Sam Bankman Fried, founder and CEO of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which collapsed a month ago, has been arrested.
According to Arabiya.net, the Bahamas police arrested him yesterday, Monday, after US prosecutors filed criminal charges against him.
Bahamas Attorney General Ryan Bender said police arrested Bankman-Fried after receiving formal notification from the US government that they had filed criminal charges and would likely seek his extradition. US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams confirmed the arrest on Twitter and said the move was taken at the request of the US government. He added that the indictment will be opened on Tuesday morning.
The arrest and criminal charges confirm that US authorities intend to personally pursue Pinkman Fried after the disastrous collapse of FTX last month, according to the Financial Times.
The failure of the Bahamas-based crypto exchange, which was once valued at $32 billion, has led to potential losses for millions of creditors including retail investors and sent shock waves through the crypto industry.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission said it will file separate civil charges on Tuesday related to Bankman Fried's alleged violations of securities laws.
We commend our law enforcement partners for their work to secure Pinkman Fried's arrest in the Bahamas on federal criminal charges, SEC Enforcement Division Director Gurbir Grewal said in a statement.
The Royal Bahamas Police said in a statement that his arrest was in reference to various financial offenses against US laws, which are also offenses against the laws of the Commonwealth of the Bahamas. According to the statement, Bankman-Fried, who was detained without incident, will appear in Nassau Magistrates Court on Tuesday.
His arrest comes a day before he is scheduled to testify before the US House of Representatives Financial Services Committee at an FTX bankruptcy hearing.
In written testimony prior to the same hearing, released on Monday, court-appointed FTX CEO John Ray III said the trading platform's collapse was due to the sheer concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of inexperienced individuals.
Ray added that FTX allowed its trading subsidiary, Alameda Research, to borrow funds from the cryptocurrency exchange without any effective restrictions.
Pinkman-Fried had initially hinted that he would not be willing to testify at the hearing, but bowed to pressure after committee chair Maxine Waters indicated that lawmakers were willing to subpoena him.
In response to the arrest of Pinkman Fried, Bahamas Prime Minister Philip Davis said that the Caribbean nation and the United States have a common interest in holding accountable all individuals associated with FTX who may have betrayed the trust of clients and broken the law. Davis said Bahamas authorities will continue their regulatory and criminal investigations into the collapse of FTX.
And the Court of Justice is, in fact, the Financial Services Committee of the US House of Representatives, which demands answers about how the company that Fried founded 3 years ago collapsed and made its headquarters in Nassau, the largest of the Bahamas.
The FTX, whose new CEO, John J. Ray, will also testify today, filed for bankruptcy a month ago in the United States, after it faced a liquidity crisis, which made more than a million depositors unable to withdraw their money, so the country's attorney general issued a statement. The Caribbean issued a statement stating that Fried is being held under the extradition law in our country, indicating the intention to extradite him to the United States, especially since his arrest was at the request of its judiciary.
