Prosecutors Withdraw SBF’s $40 Million Bribery Charge to CCP Official

By Anthony • June 19, 2023 7:33 am • Comments

Sam Bankman-Fried went from a man who was expected to spend his entire adult life in prison to possibly being a free man in a matter of days.

The disgraced founder of FTX was originally facing a total of 13 federal charges.

Now however prosecutors have withdrawn five charges that SBF is expected to face at an unknown future date.

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One charge that was withdrawn was quite serious and it was a bribery conspiracy charge that alleged he spent $40 million dollars in an attempt to bribe a Chinese government official.

Another serious charge that was dropped was a bank fraud charge that alleged SBF “created a new company with no staff to get around FTX being rejected for a California bank account.”

Here’s what Business Insider reported:

Sam Bankman-Fried hasn’t been having a great year, but he did win a small victory on Wednesday. The FTX cofounder was facing 13 criminal charges, but in a court filing seen by Insider federal prosecutors said they would withdraw five of these for the October 2 trial. That’s because those accusations were only submitted after Bankman-Fried was extradited from the Bahamas, where his crypto exchange was headquartered.

Bankman-Fried was extradited to the US because of a treaty with the Bahamas. After spending nine days in a correctional center in Nassau that’s known for its squalid conditions, the former billionaire is now under house arrest at his childhood home in Palo Alto, California.

The withdrawn charges include bank fraud — prosecutors said Bankman-Fried created a new company with no staff to get around FTX being rejected for a California bank account — and a bribery conspiracy charge alleging that he spent $40 million trying to influence at least one Chinese government official.

Earlier this week, SBF won a ruling in the Bahamas which gave him the ability to argue that its government shouldn’t consent to those five newer charges, Bloomberg reported.

Per Bitcoin:

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and federal prosecutors in New York have opted to temporarily suspend five charges against the beleaguered FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF). Nevertheless, these five charges have been “severed” and deferred until 2024, potentially leaving SBF’s legal team to juggle two cases in the future.

5 Counts Against SBF Severed and Scheduled for Another Trial
Initially, FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) faced eight charges when indicted by the U.S. government, but shortly after, an additional five charges were tacked on including alleged bank fraud and bribing a Chinese government official. Yet, on June 14, federal prosecutors sought to detach these five supplementary charges, citing the need for approval from the Bahamian judicial system to fulfill the U.S.-Bahamas extradition treaty conditions. Consequently, the U.S. government requested a specialty waiver from the Bahamas regarding this issue.

Although SBF is set to confront the initial eight indictment charges in October, the remaining five charges will be addressed in a trial slated for March 11, 2024. This trial will encompass counts four, six, nine, ten, and thirteen entailing bank fraud, derivatives and securities fraud, bribery, and operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business. As reported by Isource News—a Twitter account offering “minute-by-minute intelligence from named and unnamed sources”— sources claim that it appears SBF is “unlikely to see any jail time after major counts dropped today.”

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