Sam Bankman-Fried Accused of Sending $40M Crypto Bribe to Chinese Officials

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Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, has been charged with another crime: bribery. In an indictment filed Tuesday, the Justice Department alleges that Bankman-Fried “authorized and directed a bribe of at least $40 million to one or more Chinese government officials.”

The bribe was an alleged attempt to get Chinese authorities to unblock some of the accounts associated with FTX’s sister company Alameda, which contained over $1 billion in cryptocurrency. According to the DOJ, this all happened in November 2021, at a time when Bankman-Fried wanted to access the funds to help Alameda “get and keep business.” The indictment says Bankman-Fried exhausted “numerous methods” in trying to release the funds before allegedly resorting to a bribe that ultimately resulted in the funds being released.

“After confirming that the accounts were unblocked, Bankman-Fried authorized the transfer of tens of millions of additional dollars in cryptocurrency to complete the bribe,” the indictment states. “Alameda used the unfrozen cryptocurrency to fund additional Alameda business activity.”

In addition to this latest bribery charge, Bankman-Fried’s new bail conditions prohibit the crypto founder from using a smartphone. His new non-smartphone won’t have access to the internet or Signal, which Bankman-Fried allegedly tried to contact colleagues with while out on bail. Bankman-Fried will also have to return his existing laptop, which will “be configured to allow access” only to specific websites, such as YouTube, Wikipedia and Netflix, meaning no more League of Legends.

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