US SEC charges Sam Bankman-Fried for fraud, to appear in Bahamas court

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday charged Samuel Bankman-Fried with orchestrating a scheme to defraud equity investors in FTX, the crypto trading platform of which he was the CEO and co-founder.

According to the SEC’s complaint, since at least May 2019, FTX, based in the Bahamas, raised more than $1.8 billion from equity investors, including approximately $1.1 billion from approximately 90 US-based investors.

This comes a day after the 30-year-old crypto billionaire was arrested in the Bahamas. He was arrested by the Royal Bahamas Police Force at the request of the U.S. government.

“S.B.F.’s arrest followed receipt of formal notification from the United States that it has filed criminal charges against S.B.F. and is likely to request his extradition,” the government of the Bahamas said in a statement.

Bankman- Fried, also known as SBF, was scheduled to testify in Congress on Tuesday about the collapse of FTX which was the second biggest crypto exchange after Binance.

It was reported earlier that criminal charges against SBF included wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, securities fraud, securities fraud conspiracy, and money laundering.

Prosecutors for the Southern District of New York confirmed that SBF had been charged and that an indictment would be unsealed soon.

SBF had stepped down from FTX after the crypto exchange began bankruptcy proceedings. John J. Ray III who succeeded SBF had said that he had never seen anything quite like the corporate governance and documentation failures that he found at FTX.

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