US asks to seize crypto tied to Sam Bankman-Fried bribery charge

THE US is not through trying to seize cryptocurrency tied to Sam Bankman-Fried a year after he was convicted of masterminding a massive fraud at his FTX exchange.

In a court filing on Tuesday (Nov 12) in New York, prosecutors sued to obtain digital currency that the government said was in an account connected to bribes paid to Chinese officials before FTX collapsed. The account, which held US$8.6 million as at Dec 12, 2023, is currently worth about US$18.5 million, due to a run-up in the value of the holdings in the last 11 months.

Bankman-Fried is serving a 25-year prison sentence for using billions of US dollars in customer deposits at the FTX crypto exchange for luxury real estate, political donations and risky investments. Prosecutors had also charged him with bribing foreign officials, but that count, which would have required a second trial, was dropped after a jury found him guilty last year.

Bankman-Fried is appealing his conviction and sentence.

Prosecutors said in the now-dismissed charge that Chinese law enforcement authorities in early 2021 froze accounts held by Alameda Research, a trading fund that was affiliated with FTX, on two Chinese crypto exchanges. Bankman-Fried allegedly authorised a US$40 million bribe to unfreeze US$1 billion in the Chinese accounts.

The account contains Solana, Cardano, Ripple, Internet Computer and Avalanche cryptocurrencies. The rise in value is due mostly to a large increase in the past year in Solana, the No 4 cryptocurrency by market cap, according to CoinMarketCap.com. BLOOMBERG

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