U.S. prosecutors charged FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried with paying a $40M bribe to Chinese officials so they would unfreeze his hedge fund's crypto account in China.
Bankman-Fried already faces charges of stealing billions of dollars from failed crypto exchange FTX to cover the losses of his Alameda Research hedge fund.
Prosecutors argue that Bankman-Fried violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by bribing a foreign official.
- The indictment alleges that he ordered a $40M cryptocurrency payment to a private cryptocurrency wallet from Alameda's primary trading account.
- The payment occurred after Chinese authorities had frozen Alameda accounts holding more than $1B in cryptocurrency as part of an investigation.
Bankman-Fried has pled not guilty to eight of the 13 counts he faces.
- He has not yet been arraigned on separate campaign finance charges or the new bribery conspiracy charges.
- Former Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison, former FTX CTO Zixiao "Gary" Wang, and former FTX engineering chief Nishad Singh have pled guilty to federal charges and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.
