A report by Reuters says that US Prosecutors on Tuesday indicted Former FTX CEO, Sam Bankman- Fried for allegedly giving out over $40 million in bribes to Chinese officials.
The report states that Bankman-fried had made the offer to allow for the unfreezing of accounts belonging to Alameda Research earlier confiscated by US authorities in the US.
“The accounts were unfrozen after the bribe payment was transferred around November 2021 from Alameda’s main trading account to a private cryptocurrency wallet, according to the new indictment.
“After the accounts were unfrozen, Bankman-Fried authorized a transfer of tens of millions of dollars of additional cryptocurrency to complete the bribe, prosecutors said.”
The charges against Bankman- Fried have therefore been raised to 13 counts, with the U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan scheduling a court hearing for Thursday after prosecutors asked for Bankman-Fried to be arraigned on the new count indictment.
Bankman- Fried was initially indicted on eight counts over the collapse of FTX.
Subsequently, prosecutors accused him of carrying out an illegal campaign scheme in Washington DC.