Sam Bankman-Fried has been accused of offering millions in bribes to Chinese officials in the latest criminal charge against the disgraced founder of the FTX digital asset exchange.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed its latest superseding indictment against SBF, marking the second update of SBF’s charges since FTX’s dramatic implosion last November. The latest indictment adds conspiracy to violate the anti-bribery provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), which prohibits U.S. citizens/entities from paying foreign officials to benefit an international business opportunity.
The bribe in question relates to FTX’s affiliated market-maker Alameda Research, which, like FTX, was completely under SBF’s control. The DoJ alleges that in 2021, SBF “authorized and directed a bribe of at least $40 million to one or more Chinese government officials.” The payment, made in unspecified digital tokens, was intended to “unfreeze certain Alameda trading accounts containing over $1 billion in cryptocurrency, which had been frozen by Chinese authorities.”
