Bankman-Fried has signed legal papers paving the way for his extradition to the US from the Bahamas.
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried has signed legal papers paving the way for his extradition from the Bahamas to the United States, where he faces fraud charges over the cryptocurrency exchange’s collapse, a Bahamas official has said.
Doan Cleare, the Bahamas’ acting commissioner of Corrections, told Reuters the documents were signed around noon on Tuesday. A hearing in Bankman-Fried’s case will take place on Wednesday at 11am Eastern Standard Time (16:00 GMT), a court official told Reuters.
Wednesday’s proceeding could set the stage for the 30-year-old cryptocurrency mogul to depart the Caribbean nation after several days of confusion about the status of Bankman-Fried’s extradition.
A US-based lawyer for Bankman-Fried did not respond to requests for comment. A person familiar with the matter said Bankman-Fried intends to consent to extradition. Bankman-Fried has acknowledged risk-management failures at FTX but has said he does not believe he has criminal liability.
A spokesman for the US attorney’s office in Manhattan declined to comment.
Bankman-Fried was arrested on December 13 in the Bahamas, where he lives and where FTX was based, after a grand jury sitting in a Manhattan federal court indicted him for allegedly stealing customer funds to plug losses at Alameda Research, his crypto hedge fund.
He initially told a Bahamian court he would contest extradition, but Reuters and other outlets reported over the weekend that he would reverse his decision.
Earlier on Tuesday, Bankman-Fried’s local defence lawyer Jerone Roberts declined to comment as he departed the Magistrate Court in the capital Nassau. US embassy officials earlier entered the courthouse, a Reuters witness said, but Bankman-Fried was not seen on Tuesday.
Fall from grace
The arrest capped a stunning fall from grace for Bankman-Fried, who rode a boom in the values of bitcoin and other digital…
