NASSAU, Bahamas/NEW YORK (Reuters) -Sam Bankman-Fried indicated in a Bahamas courtroom on Tuesday that he would fight extradition to the United States, hours after U.S. prosecutors accused the founder and former CEO of FTX of fraud and violating campaign finance laws.
The 30-year-old, appearing relaxed and wearing a blue shirt, arrived at a heavily guarded Bahamas court on Tuesday for his first in-person public appearance since the cryptocurrency exchange's collapse. He told the court he will not waive his right to an extradition hearing.
Mr. Bankman-Fried is reviewing the charges with his legal team and considering all of his legal options,” his lawyer, Mark S. Cohen, said in a statement.
The Bahamas judge adjourned the hearing until 2:15 p.m. EST (1915 GMT) to consider whether the court has jurisdiction over bail. The U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan separately said it will hold a news conference at 2 p.m. EST on its charges.FTX's current CEO, John Ray, told congressional lawmakers on Tuesday that FTX lost $8 billion of client money, saying the company showed "absolute concentration of control in the hands of a small group of grossly inexperienced, nonsophisticated individuals."
Bankman-Fried would face long odds fighting extradition to the United States, according to experts, but he has legal options available under the Bahamas’ extradition treaty with the United States.
In the indictment unsealed on Tuesday morning, U.S. prosecutors said Bankman-Fried had engaged in a scheme to defraud FTX's customers by misappropriating their deposits to pay for expenses and debts and to make investments on behalf of his crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research LLC.
He also defrauded lenders to Alameda by providing false and misleading information about the hedge fund's condition, and sought to disguise the money he had earned from committing wire fraud, prosecutors said
Both the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) alleged Bankman-Fried committed fraud in lawsuits filed on Tuesday.
"While he spent lavishly on office space and condominiums in The Bahamas, and sank billions of dollars of customer funds into speculative venture investments, Bankman-Fried's house of cards began to crumble," the SEC filing said.
The CFTC sued Bankman-Fried, Alameda and FTX on Tuesday, alleging fraud involving digital commodity assets.
Since at least May 2019, FTX raised more than $1.8 billion from equity investors in a years-long "brazen, multi-year scheme" in which Bankman-Fried concealed FTX was diverting customer funds to Alameda Research, the SEC alleged.
While the public believed Bankman-Fried's "lies" and sent billions of dollars to FTX, he improperly diverted customer funds to the hedge fund, the SEC said, even as it was increasingly clear that Alameda and FTX could not make customers whole