Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, was arrested Monday in the Bahamas at the request of the U.S. government.
In a statement, the government of the Bahamas said the arrest came after officials received "formal notification from the United States that it has filed criminal charges against SBF and is likely to request his extradition."
This was confirmed by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Damian Williams, who said Bahamian officials arrested Bankman-Fried "at the request of the U.S. government, based on a sealed indictment." He added that the indictment will likely be unsealed on Tuesday morning, "and we will have more to say at that time."
On Nov. 11, FTX filed for bankruptcy after a run on deposits "exposed an $8 billion hole in the company's accounts," The New York Times writes. Bankman-Fried was soon being investigated by the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission, with federal prosecutors in Manhattan looking into whether any laws were broken when FTX transferred billions of dollars to Alameda Research, a crypto hedge fund started and owned by Bankman-Fried.
Bankman-Fried made several public appearances after the bankruptcy filing, and at the recent DealBook Summit, he pinned FTX's collapse on "huge management failures." He had been scheduled to testify before a congressional committee on Tuesday.