Sam Bankman-Fried has filed a motion to dismiss the majority of the charges brought against him in the previous month. The U.S. Department of Justice has decided to proceed with trying the founder and former CEO of FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, only on the eight charges that were initially brought in December 2022, at least for the time being.
Prosecutors from the DOJ stated in a recent communication on Wednesday night that they would consent to prosecuting Bankman-Fried on a few charges, which include wire fraud, securities fraud, and money laundering. This decision comes after a court in the Bahamas intervened and prevented the local government from pursuing additional charges.
Bankman-Fried is confronted with a total of 13 charges, with five of them being added through superseding indictments in February and March 2023. In a motion to dismiss filed last month, Bankman-Fried’s attorneys argued that the government of the Bahamas needed to give consent to the supplementary charges, such as bank fraud, operating an unlicensed money transmitter, and bribery. This requirement arose due to Bankman-Fried’s arrest in the Bahamas and subsequent extradition to the United States last year.
A court in the Bahamas issued a ruling on Tuesday, preventing the government from giving consent to the supplementary charges until Bankman-Fried’s defense team has the opportunity to challenge the approval. U.S. Attorney Damian Williams and his team sent a letter to Judge Lewis Kaplan of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, expressing that the legal battle in the Bahamas court might persist until Bankman-Fried’s trial in the United States is near.
The recent superseding indictment includes charges four (involving fraud on FTX customers related to derivatives), six (regarding securities fraud against FTX investors), nine (involving conspiracy to commit bank fraud), ten (related to conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitter business), and thirteen (concerning conspiracy to bribe foreign government officials).
According to the letter, “Given the uncertainty surrounding the timing of the Bahamas’ decision on specialty and in order to simplify the trial process and alleviate the defendant’s trial preparation burden, the government is willing to proceed with the scheduled trial on the counts outlined in the original indictment.”
Charges on FTX Founder
The original charges encompass several counts, including count one (conspiracy to commit wire fraud on customers of FTX), count two (wire fraud on customers of FTX), count three (conspiracy to commit fraud on FTX customers tied to derivatives), count five (conspiracy to commit securities fraud against FTX investors), count seven (conspiracy to commit wire fraud on lenders to Alameda Research), count eight (wire fraud on lenders to Alameda Research), count eleven (conspiracy to commit money laundering), and count twelve (conspiracy to make unlawful political contributions and defraud the Federal Elections Commission).
The prosecutors have requested a trial date in the first quarter of 2024 for the additional charges brought against Bankman-Fried. Currently, Bankman-Fried’s trial is scheduled for October. However, his defense team has filed additional motions seeking to dismiss most of the additional charges based on various grounds. The Department of Justice (DOJ) has responded to these arguments, opposing the dismissal. A hearing has been scheduled for Thursday at 10:30 a.m. ET to hear oral arguments on the motions to dismiss.
The DOJ’s letter, addressing these matters, was initially reported by Inner City Press. In a second letter submitted by the prosecutors on Wednesday night, they addressed the claims made by Bankman-Fried’s defense team, which accused the DOJ of not providing all the requested discovery materials. The DOJ stated in this second letter that it believes it has provided the majority of the discovery materials but experienced delays due to technical issues and other reasons.