Bahamian Government Officials Allegedly Asked SBF to Mint Millions of Dollars in New Tokens Amid the FTX Collapse – After Sam Bankman-Fried arrest in The Bahamas, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged SBF with fraud in connection with the FTX collapse. Reports indicate that the Southern District of New York (SDNY) prosecutor’s office and SDNY attorney Damian Williams have also filed criminal charges against SBF.
“The Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office on Tuesday unsealed an eight-count indictment charging disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried with a multi-year scheme to siphon money out of the now-collapsed crypto exchange,” law360.com court reporter Rachel Scharf disclosed on Tuesday. Furthermore, court documents from the FTX Chapter 11 bankruptcy case indicate that the joint provisional liquidators of FTX Digital Markets filed a motion to dismiss the Chapter 11 case of FTX Property Holdings LTD.
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Additionally, lawyers have accused the Bahamian government of requesting that SBF create additional digital tokens worth millions of dollars. The tokens allegedly were delivered to Bahamian officials, according to FTX’s legal team. John J. Ray III, the new CEO of FTX, and his team observed the issuance of additional tokens and assumed that SBF and FTX co-founder Gary Wang were the executives who followed orders from Bahamian officials. The story follows the peculiar interaction between FTX officials, such as exchange chief Ryan Salame, and vertical farming firms.
In January of 2022, Ryan Salame and Philip Davis, the prime minister of the Bahamas, visited 80 Acres Farms in Ohio. Moreover, during his interview with Mario Nawfal’s Twitter Spaces team, FTX co-founder SBF confessed that withdrawals to Bahamian residents occurred prior to the exchange’s complete collapse, possibly on two separate instances. SBF also described giving Bahamian withdrawals the green light in his two-part interview with Tiffany Fong. FTX’s American attorney detailed this week that SBF negotiated with the Bahamian government and $100 million a day in withdrawals was allegedly permitted by SBF.
Discussing the minting of new crypto tokens for the Bahamian government, the attorneys assert that SBF and Gary Wang worked closely with government officials prior to the 11 November 2022 bankruptcy filing. “It is a request for live, dynamic access that would be provided immediately to the government of the Bahamas and to Messrs. Sam Bankman-Fried and Gary Wang, who are located in the Bahamas and working closely with Bahamian officials,” the FTX lawyers said in the court filing.
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After the allegations, the Securities Commission of The Bahamas issued a statement and wholeheartedly denied FTX CEO John Ray’s allegations published in the court filings. The Bahamas regulator said the accusations are meant “to create a false impression of communications between Mr. Bankman-Fried and the Commission.”
