The CEO of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, was arrested in the Bahamas Dec. 12 and charged with eight counts of wire fraud and other charges; he is being held without bail as a flight risk by Bahamian authorities, on request of U.S. Department of Justice which likely intends to seek extradition.
The incarceration blocked, at the last minute, Bankman-Fried’s testimony to the House Financial Services Committee’s hearing on Dec. 13, which was likely to have been followed by Senate testimony. From attorney Jonathan Turley’s blog column on this: “Yet, that still does not explain why the Justice Department would not want to hear a full account from Bankman-Fried [i.e., his Congressional testimony] before effectively shutting him down as a criminal defendant. This is the first time that I can recall where the prosecutors, rather than defense counsel, moved effectively to muzzle a defendant.” Bankman-Fried was the Democrats’ second-biggest contributor in the 2021-22 election cycle and partisan politicking would undoubtedly have made him talk about this during the hearings.
