Sam Bankman-Fried Faces New Charges with Chinese Officials
2023.03.28 14:22
Sam Bankman-Fried Faces New Charges with Chinese Officials
By Tiffany Smith
Budrigannews.com – A new 13-count indictment has been filed against Sam Bankman-Fried, or “SBF,” the founder and former CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX.
In a court filing by United States attorney Damian Williams, an alleged $40 million bribe to a Chinese government official is one of the new SBF’s charges in a superseding indictment.
In segment 105 of the documenting, the protest guarantees that SBF and other related parties “coordinated and caused the exchange of in some measure roughly $40 million in digital money expected to support at least one Chinese government authorities.” The alleged purpose of the transaction was to persuade Chinese officials to unfreeze cryptocurrency accounts at Alameda Research, an affiliate of FTX, according to the allegations. According to reports, the accounts contained cryptocurrency worth more than $1 billion.
The filing claims that early in 2021, certain Alameda accounts on “two of China’s largest crypto exchanges” were frozen by Chinese authorities. The FTX pioneer knew about the freeze and attempted various techniques to thaw the records, including endeavoring to move digital money to deceitful records with an end goal to avoid China’s freeze orders.
According to the court filing, “Samuel Bankman-Fried discussed with others and ultimately agreed to and directed a multi-million-dollar bribe to seek to unfreeze the accounts after months of failed attempts to unfreeze the accounts.” The U.S. government discovered that Alameda used the unfrozen cryptocurrency to fund additional trading activity after the accounts were unfrozen at SBF’s direction.
Since China officially prohibited cryptocurrency exchanges from providing services in the country in 2017, it appears unclear which Chinese cryptocurrency exchanges Alameda was using at the beginning of 2021. In September 2021, China implemented a blanket ban on cryptocurrency, as previously reported.
FTX pioneer Bankman-Seared faces a preliminary set for Oct. 2, 2023, on criminal accusations of taking billions of dollars in FTX client reserves worked with through Alameda Exploration. Additionally, it is alleged that he made substantial illegal political contributions. He pleaded not guilty to eight charges, which carry a maximum sentence of 115 years in prison if he is found guilty.
