Sam Bankman-Fried has been arrested by authorities in the Bahamas at the request of the U.S. government.
The FTX CEO was arrested by the Royal Bahamas Police Force following a formal notification from the United States government that it has filed criminal charges against him, according to a Dec. 12 statement from the Bahamas Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Ryan Pinder.
Bahamian Prime Minister Philip Davis said in a statement that both countries have “a shared interest in holding accountable all individuals associated with FTX who may have betrayed the public trust and broken the law.
A tweet from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York said authorities in the Bahamas arrested Bankman-Fried based on a sealed indictment it filed that it plans to unseal.
The U.S. Department of Justice was closely examining whether FTX improperly transferred hundreds of millions around the same time as the company declared bankruptcy.
Bahamian authorities were similarly undertaking their own active and ongoing investigation into FTX as announced on Nov. 27 by Pinder that involved the country’s Securities Commission, the Financial Intelligence Unit and the police’s financial crimes unit.
