FTX was headquartered in the Bahamas, due to the fact that the island nation invested a couple of years ago in becoming a hosting hub for crypto companies and had favorable regulations.
On November 11, it became clear that FTX could not be saved and the company was forced to file for bankruptcy protection in the United States.
“Mutual interest”
Prosecutor Damian Williams said in a statement that the charges against Sam Bankman-Fried will be made public on Tuesday and that the prosecution will then comment on them further.
Bahamas Attorney General Ryan Pinder says the country will “expeditiously” extradite Bankman-Fried to the United States as soon as the Americans make a formal request.
“The Bahamas and the United States have a shared interest in bringing to justice those individuals within FTX who may have betrayed the public trust and violated the law,” said Bahamas Prime Minister Phillip Davis in a statement.
The arrest of Sam Bankman-Fried, who resigned as CEO amid the bankruptcy filing for FTX, comes just one day before he is scheduled to appear before a Senate committee in Washington DC along with trustee John J Ray III.
Has billions in debt
When FTX was at its peak, the company was valued at $32 billion. Now the company has debts of just over 3 billion dollars to the 50 largest creditors. In addition to that, there are millions of other creditors worldwide who are not getting their money.
The FTX crash has created ripples in the crypto world. Several companies with exposure to FTX have also been forced to file for bankruptcy, such as the crypto lender Blockfi.