Sam Bankman-Fried accused of sending a $40 million crypto bribe to Chinese officials

Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the collapsed FTX cryptocurrency exchange, has been charged with yet another crime: bribery. In an indictment filed on Tuesday, the Department of Justice claims Bankman-Fried “authorized and directed a bribe of at least $40 million to one or more Chinese government officials.”

The bribe was an alleged attempt to coerce Chinese officials into unfreezing some of the accounts associated with FTX’s sister company, Alameda, which contained over $1 billion in cryptocurrency. According to the DOJ, all of this occurred in November 2021, at a time when Bankman-Fried wanted access to the funds in order to assist Alameda “in obtaining and retaining business.” The indictment states Bankman-Fried exhausted “numerous...

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