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Sam Bankman-Fried accused with bribe.

 

Crypto
The US has accused former FTX chief exec­ut­ive Sam Bank­man-Fried of pay­ing a $40mn bribe to one or more Chinese gov­ern­ment offi­cials in a revised indict­ment filed in fed­eral court in Man­hat­tan yes­ter­day.

Pro­sec­utors allege that Bank­man-Fried sent the bribe in crypto­cur­rency to Chinese offi­cials to regain access to trad­ing accounts frozen by law enforce­ment in the coun­try. The accounts were linked to Alameda Research, FTX’s sis­ter com­pany. Bank­man-Fried was ini­tially charged with eight crim­inal counts in Decem­ber after being extra­dited from his home in the Bahamas over what pro­sec­utors called «one of the biggest fin­an­cial frauds in Amer­ican his­tory». The gov­ern­ment last month broadened its case against Bank­man-Fried to include charges of secur­it­ies fraud and con­spir­acy to com­mit bank fraud.

Accord­ing to the latest indict­ment, Bank­man-Fried repeatedly tried to unfreeze accounts in China linked to Alameda Research, includ­ing hir­ing attor­neys to lobby on the com­pany’s behalf in the coun­try.

The indict­ment alleges that after months of failed attempts to unfreeze the accounts, Bank­man-Fried dir­ec­ted the mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar bribe.

On his instruc­tion, one Alameda employee sent crypto pay­ment instruc­tions for at least a por­tion of the bribe to other Alameda employ­ees, accord­ing to the indict­ment. Bank­man-Fried later instruc­ted a bribe pay­ment, then worth roughly $40mn, to be trans­ferred from Alameda to a private crypto wal­let.

Around the time of the pay­ment, in approx­im­ately Novem­ber 2021, accord­ing to the indict­ment, the accounts were unfrozen, prompt­ing Bank­man-Fried to trans­fer addi­tional tens of mil­lions of dol­lars worth of crypto­cur­ren­cies.

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