Former FTX CEO SBF Faces Possibility of Extradition to US for Questioning

FTX and its operators are currently at the center of one of the crypto industry’s biggest scandals.

Amidst speculation over Sam Bankman-Fried’s whereabouts, the authorities are mulling over extraditing the former CEO of the bankrupt crypto exchange, FTX, back to the United States.

According to the latest Bloomberg report, law-enforcement officials in the US and Bahamas have been engaged in talks over SBF as they investigate his role in FTX’s implosion. People familiar with the matter said that Bankman-Fried has been cooperating with Bahamian authorities.

The Bahamian securities regulators and financial investigators have launched a probe into the fall of FTX and are looking for potential criminal misconduct by its operators.
Even though none of the execs, including SBF, have been charged with anything yet, many speculate that his behavior, as well as FTX’s business practices, demonstrated fraud.
A former deputy attorney general believes the US Justice Department, which recently opened an investigation into the matter, could bring criminal charges against the once-crypto billionaire.
The potential extradition development comes after reports of the disgraced exec running off to South America surfaced. FlightRadar24 tweeted last week that SBF was flying from Nassau to Argentina.
But Argentina does not make for an ideal destination to evade authorities in the US. SBF later told Reuters that he is still in the Bahamas.
It was also reported that the SBF, along with FTX co-founder Gary Wang and director of engineering Nishad Singh, was in the Bahamas “under supervision” by the local authorities.
Bankman-Fried stepped down as the chief executive of the FTX group as part of a bankruptcy filing. He apologized to users and vowed to make them “whole.”
On Tuesday, he posted that he was meeting with regulators and wanted to help FTX customers.
Bitcoin bull and executive chairman of MicroStrategy lashed out at Bankman-Fried for lobbying against “all of the virtues of the industry,” including bitcoin, by leveraging counterfeit finances and bribing certain individuals.