MADRID, 14 Dic. (EUROPA PRESS) –
A Bahamian judge has denied bail to Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the bankrupt platform for buying and selling cryptocurrencies and other cryptographic assets FTX, arrested Tuesday in the country after a “notification” from the United States and facing his possible extradition.
Judge Joyann Ferguson-Pratt has indicated after a hearing that has lasted several hours that there is a high risk of flight that prevents Bankman-Fried from being able to benefit from a release on bail, according to the newspaper ‘The Nassau Guardian’.
Thus, he has ordered that he remain in custody until February 8 after his arrest at his residence in Albany, Nassau. Bahamas Attorney General Ryan Pinder said Tuesday that “by the time a formal extradition request is made, the Bahamas plans to process it expeditiously.”
The US authorities have charged Bankman-Fried with eight charges, including conspiracy to embezzle client funds, while the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Gary Gensler, has accused the detainee of ” build a house of cards with pillars of lies”, as reported by the US television channel CNN.
FTX announced in mid-November that it had decided to file for the protection of Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Law to carry out in an orderly manner the process of evaluation and liquidation of assets for the benefit of the interested parties. Thus, he explained that the FTX Group process includes FTX US, as well as the commercial firm Alameda Research and a total of 130 affiliated entities.
FTX’s solvency had been called into question after its rival Binance decided to reverse its intention to come to the rescue of the platform, after having carried out due diligence and before the opening of investigations by government agencies in the United States.
Previously, in a conference with investors, Bankman-Fried, still CEO of FTX, had estimated the hole in the platform at around 8,000 million dollars (a similar figure in euros), including the need for around 4,000 million dollars to that the firm could maintain its solvency.
