Legal Case Against FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried Continues Despite Dropped Charges

Officials in New York are planning to continue their legal case against crypto executive Sam Bankman-Fried for alleged campaign finance violations. This comes even after the charge was dropped last month due to a technicality. Bankman-Fried, former CEO of cryptocurrency FTX, faced multiple charges last year related to an alleged multi-billion dollar fraud against investors of his company FTX. 

In a letter addressed to the judge on Tuesday, prosecutors revealed their plan to submit a revised indictment next week. This new indictment will include the seven charges that the Government plans to present as evidence during the trial in October.

The superseding indictment will clarify that SBF is still accused of participating in an unlawful campaign finance scheme, which is part of the overall fraud and money laundering schemes outlined in the initial charges. 

“And as part of the originally charged money laundering scheme, the defendant also concealed the source of his fraudulent proceeds through political straw donations. As the Government will outline in its forthcoming motions in limine [a pretrial motion], the evidence of the defendant’s campaign finance conduct is admissible at trial as direct proof of the Trial Charges,” a part of the letter read.

As reported by CNBC, the treaty with the Bahamas stops prosecutors from adding more charges to someone’s case after extradition without permission from the Bahamian government. 

The FTX collapse left over a million customers unable to access about $8 billion in assets. Around 80,000 of FTX’s customers are in the UK, and a lawyer representing them said losses could be as high as £5 million, including life savings.  In 2021, SBF became a billionaire through his successful business FTX, a major crypto exchange handling billions in daily trades.