Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the Bahamas-based cryptocurrency exchange FTX, was arrested on Monday in The Bahamas after being criminally charged by U.S. prosecutors.
The attorney general’s office for The Bahamas said it proceeded with the arrest after receiving formal confirmation of charges against Bankman-Fried, adding that it expects he will be extradited to the United States.
A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan confirmed Bankman-Fried had been arrested in The Bahamas but declined to comment on what the charges were.
FTX, which had been among the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, filed for bankruptcy protection on Nov. 11 in one of the highest-profile crypto blowups after traders pulled $6 billion from the platform in three days and rival exchange Binance abandoned a rescue deal.
The liquidity crunch came after Bankman-Fried secretly moved $10 billion of FTX customer funds to Alameda, Reuters reported, citing two people familiar with the matter. At least $1 billion in customer funds had vanished, the people said.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan, led by veteran securities fraud prosecutor Williams, in mid-November began investigating how FTX handled customer funds
The Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission also opened probes.
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