Sam Bankman-Fried, the previous CEO of the collapsed FTX cryptocurrency alternate, was arrested by Bahamas regulation enforcement on Monday night.
“S.B.F.’s arrest adopted receipt of formal notification from the USA that it has filed felony fees in opposition to S.B.F. and is more likely to request his extradition,” the federal government of the Bahamas stated in an announcement Monday night time.
Bankman-Fried’s arrest is step one in a multi-stage authorized course of to switch the one-time crypto billionaire to U.S. custody.
Prosecutors from the Southern District of New York stated they might unseal the indictment in opposition to Bankman-Fried on Tuesday morning. The New York Occasions reported that the fees will embody wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, securities fraud, securities fraud conspiracy and cash laundering. The Securities and Exchanges Fee additionally stated it’s going to unveil fees in opposition to the FTX CEO on Tuesday.
The U.S. and the Bahamas have had an extradition course of in place since 1994, when a treaty signed by each nations got here into pressure. Extradition is a authorized course of the place one jurisdiction—on this case, the U.S.—asks one other jursidiction—on this case, the Bahamas—to give up somebody accused of against the law so she or he can face prosecution.
At this level, the U.S. has not made a proper extradition request to the Bahamas. But the extradition treaty permits the Bahamas to make a “provisional arrest” on the urging of the U.S. earlier than the formal extradition request is delivered. A detainee might be held for a most of 60 days whereas the formal request is pending.
If the Bahamas agrees to extradite Bankman-Fried, the nation would give up the previous FTX CEO to the U.S., together with another vital proof collected within the Bahamas. However the Caribbean nation may resolve to defer Bankman-Fried’s switch because it conducts its personal investigation.
“Whereas the USA is pursuing felony fees in opposition to SBF individually, The Bahamas will proceed its personal regulatory and felony investigations into the collapse of FTX, with the continued cooperation of its regulation enforcement and regulatory companions in the USA and elsewhere,” Philip Davies, the Bahamas’ prime minister, stated in an announcement on Monday.
The Bahamas acceptance of a U.S. extradition request doesn’t confer guilt. “In case you’re proper on the regulation, the continuing doesn’t actually contain a trial on the information. It’s no protection to extradition to say, ‘I’m harmless,’” Harry Sandick, a accomplice at Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP, informed Insider.
And extraditions don’t at all times succeed.
In 2013, the U.S. tried to extradite Nationwide Safety Company whistleblower Edward Snowden from the semi-autonomous Chinese language metropolis of Hong Kong. The town’s authorities dithered on fulfilling the request, possible because of Snowden’s claims that the U.S. was spying on each mainland China and Hong Kong. The town finally allowed Snowden to go away the town, claiming the U.S. had submitted a defective request. (The U.S. suspended its extradition settlement with Hong Kong in 2020 after Beijing imposed a nationwide safety regulation on the town).
Then, in 2018, Canadian authorities arrested Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou on the request of the U.S., which hoped to extradite her to face fees of fraud and sanctions evasion. Beijing quickly arrested two Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, and tied their fates to the end result of Meng’s extradition request. Meng’s extradition hearings began in January 2020 and lasted till September 2021, when the U.S. agreed to defer Meng’s prosecution, permitting the Huawei CFO to go away Canada. Beijing launched the “two Michaels” quickly after.
The extradition of the FTX CEO is unlikely to be fairly as thorny. Bankman-Fried is scheduled to seem within the Justice of the Peace Courtroom in Nassau, the Bahamas’ capital metropolis, on Tuesday, in accordance with the New York Occasions.
However there’s one scheduled occasion that Bankman-Fried might now not be attending: his listening to in entrance of the U.S. Home Monetary Providers Committee tomorrow, the place he was set to seem nearly.
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