Sam Bankman-Fried, the former chief executive of bankrupt crypto exchange FTX has been arrested in the Bahamas.
The Bahamian attorney-general Ryan Pinder said the country’s police force had arrested the disgraced crypto tycoon after receiving “formal notification” from the US that it had filed criminal charges.
The US is “likely to request his extradition”, Pinder added in a statement.
Damian Williams, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, confirmed the arrest on Twitter.
Williams said Bankman-Fried had been arrested “at the request of the US government” based on an indictment that would be unsealed on Tuesday morning.
US authorities could not be reached for further comment.
Responding to Bankman-Fried’s arrest, Bahamian prime minister Philip Davis said the Caribbean nation and the US had a “shared interest in holding accountable all individuals associated with FTX who may have betrayed the public trust and broken the law”.
The prime minister said the Bahamian authorities would continue their own regulatory and criminal investigations into the collapse of FTX.
FTX was headquartered in the Bahamas. Bankman-Fried’s arrest was announced a day before he was scheduled to testify before the US House financial services committee in a hearing on the FTX collapse.
This is a developing story. More to follow