US Federal prosecutors agreed to withdraw new charges against FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried on Wednesday. Among the total 13 criminal charges, 5 were said to be withdrawn for the October trial. However, the prosecutors are going to consider these new charges in early 2024.
New Accusations Post Extradition from Bahamas
In a recent court filing from the US, the new 5 criminal charges are mentioned to be withdrawn from the October trial. This is because they were filed after Sam Bankman-Fried’s extradition from the Bahamas. Bahamas is where his crypto exchange company FTX was headquartered before its collapse.
The former billionaire is currently under house arrest in his childhood home in Palo Alto, California. Before his home arrest, Bankman-Fried spent nine days in a correctional center in Nassau. Because of a Treaty between the Bahamas and the US, Sam Bankman-Fried was extradited to the US.
The new accusations included bank fraud and a bribery conspiracy against Sam Bankman-Fried. US lawyers accused SBF saying that he created a new company with no staff as the FTX got rejected for a California bank account. They also alleged him saying that he spent around $40 million trying to influence the Chinese government official.
A Small Win After Several Months of Interrogation
According to a report from Bloomberg, Sam Bankman-Fried had a small win in the Bahamas as the court agreed to drop the new accusations temporarily. US prosecutors mentioned that the government is ready to proceed with the original charges in their letter to the judge.
The letter stated they are going to drop five charges “in light of the uncertainty concerning when the Bahamas will render a decision concerning the specialty and to simplify the proof at trial and decrease the burden of trial preparation on the defendant.”
This is indeed a small victory for the former billionaire who is currently out on $250 million bail. When the lawyers of SBF requested to dismiss the charges, the prosecutors asked the judge to schedule a trial over the new charges in the future.
Notably, US prosecutors dropped these charges only temporarily and they are going to reconsider them in the early 2024 court trial.
