Search
07 Sept 2025
Search
07 Sept 2025
Please allow ads as they help fund our trusted local news content.
Kindly add us to your ad blocker whitelist.
If you want further access to Ireland's best local journalism, consider contributing and/or subscribing to our free daily Newsletter .
Support our mission and join our community now.
To continue reading this article, you can subscribe for as little as €0.50 per week which will also give you access to all of our premium content and archived articles!
Alternatively, you can pay €0.50 per article, capped at €1 per day.
Thank you for supporting Ireland's best local journalism!
Sam Bankman-Fried arrived at a courthouse in the Bahamas on Monday and is expected to tell a judge he will not fight extradition to the US, where he faces multiple criminal and civil charges related to the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX.
The decision comes just a week after Bankman-Fried’s lawyers had initially said that they planned to fight extradition.
He was expected to remain in custody at the Bahamas department of corrections until an extradition hearing on February 8.
Bahamian authorities arrested Bankman-Fried last Monday at the request of the US government.
The former FTX CEO faces criminal charges in the US, including wire fraud and money laundering, as well as civil charges. The 30-year-old could potentially spend the rest of his life in jail.
FTX filed for bankruptcy protection on November 11 when it ran out of money after the cryptocurrency equivalent of a bank run.
Before the bankruptcy, Bankman-Fried was considered by many in Washington and on Wall Street as someone who could help take them mainstream, in part by working with policymakers to bring more oversight and trust to the industry.
Bankman-Fried had been worth tens of billions of dollars — at least on paper — and was able to attract celebrities such as Tom Brady or former politicians including Sir Tony Blair and Bill Clinton to his conferences at luxury resorts in the Bahamas. One prominent Silicon Valley firm, Sequoia Capital, invested hundreds of millions of dollars in FTX.
US prosecutors and financial regulators painted a different picture of Bankman-Fried and FTX last week. An indictment unsealed on Tuesday alleged he played a central role in the rapid collapse of FTX and hid its problems from the public and investors.
The Securities and Exchange Commission said Bankman-Fried illegally used investors’ money to buy real estate on behalf of himself and his family.
The new CEO of FTX, John Ray III, told a congressional committee on Tuesday that there was nothing sophisticated about what Bankman-Fried was up to.
“This is just old fashion embezzlement, taking money from others and using it for your own purposes,” he said.
Subscribe or register today to discover more from DonegalLive.ie
Buy the e-paper of the Donegal Democrat, Donegal People's Press, Donegal Post and Inish Times here for instant access to Donegal's premier news titles.
Keep up with the latest news from Donegal with our daily newsletter featuring the most important stories of the day delivered to your inbox every evening at 5pm.
This publication supports the work of the Press Council of Ireland and Office of the Press Ombudsman, and our staff operate within the Code of Practice of the Press Council. You can obtain a copy of the Code, or contact the Council, at www.presscouncil.ie, Lo-call 1800 208 080 or email: info@presscouncil.ie.
