The founder of FTX, alleged fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried, has been accused of paying a $40m (£32.5m) bribe to Chinese officials so they would release frozen cryptocurrency assets.
The 31-year-old, who is currently on bail and facing multiple fraud charges, allegedly organised the payment to unlock around $1bn in digital coins that had been seized by Beijing in 2021.
According to new US charges, Mr Bankman-Fried is said to have “agreed to and directed a multimillion-dollar bribe to unfreeze the accounts”, paying “one or more” Chinese government officials via his Alameda crypto hedge fund.
It’s the others who might have a significant problem. Do the Chinese still charge the family for the bullets required to execute the corrupt?
Sam’s not going to see daylight for some time anyway, however this charge turns out. But others?
You mean he didn’t attend mandatory annual FCP training? Colour me surprised
Depends if the Chinese officials think it is worth investing some of that $40m in ensuring Sam can’t identify them.
Does this break any sanctions regime?
Although as a Democrat donor no doubt there are ‘special rules’
“Sam’s not going to see daylight for some time anyway” You don’t think he might be Epsteined out?
Dearieme,
Epsteined, Concrete Overshoe’d, Defenestrated, Fortuyned ( all that global warming because of all the XCoin farms.. Bound to be a mentally unstable Environmental Fanatic that can be attented to that fact somewhere..), Hell of 1000 needles-ed, etc.
With the amount of money he lost/blockchains that are going to be Watched, there’s bound to be some of the less friendly international free enterprise fraternities who will want to have a nice chat with him, given half the chance…
SBF will be pretty unlucky if he gets more than a years home detention and a derisory fine. He was smart enough after all, to invest significant funds in the”right” (I.e. left) politicians slush funds. They might even be brazen enough to claim that the charges are too complex, or run a deliberately inept campaign to ensure that he is found not guilty. He has friends with that sort of clout.
Though I have to admit that suffering a case of arkanside is a possible option if he starts to say the wrong things.