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Crime Bitcoin The Courts

SBF Charged With Paying $40 Million Bribe (cbsnews.com) 48

Posted by BeauHD from the latest-developments dept.
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was charged with directing $40 million in bribes to one or more Chinese officials to unfreeze assets relating to his cryptocurrency business in a rewritten indictment unsealed Tuesday. CBS News reports: The charge of conspiracy to violate the anti-bribery provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act means Bankman-Fried faces now faces a total of 13 charges after being arrested in the Bahamas last December and brought to the United States soon thereafter. [...] The indictment said Chinese law enforcement authorities in early 2021 froze certain Alameda crypto-trading accounts on two of China's largest cryptocurrency exchanges. The accounts, it said, contained about $1 billion worth of crypto.

Bankman-Fried understood that the accounts had been frozen by Chinese authoritIes as part of an ongoing probe of a particular Alameda trading counterparty, the indictment said. After Bankman-Fried failed several attempts to unfreeze the accounts through the use of lawyers and lobbying, the 31-year-old ultimately agreed to direct a multimillion dollar bribe to try to unfreeze the accounts, the indictment said.

"Bankman-Fried and others sought to regain access to the assets to fund additional Alameda trading activity, in order to assist Bankman-Fried and Alameda in obtaining and retaining business," court documents state. The bribe payment of cryptocurrency -- then worth about $40 million -- was moved from Alameda's main trading account to a private cryptocurrency wallet in November 2021 and the frozen accounts were unfrozen at about the same time, the indictment said.
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SBF Charged With Paying $40 Million Bribe More

SBF Charged With Paying $40 Million Bribe

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  • federal pound me in the ass prison time for that!

  • How far his crimes went. So far, it’s really nothing except old-timely grifting. Just cause there’s a little bit of internet sprinkled on top doesn’t change the core of it. Ok, there was a bit of recreational drug use, but I really couldn’t care less about that.

    Any physical crimes to add to the mix? I’m guessing that he hasn’t diced anyone up in a bathtub, but it’ll be interesting to see how far he dug down the rabbit hole.
  • Did the Big Guy get his 10% ?

  • That fool. In America you can only RECEIVE Chinese bribes, not send them

  • In some parts of the world, this seems to be just how it is.

    So if some rando with an official title steals YOUR billion dollars and holds it hostage, what would YOU do to get it back and not go immediately bankrupt?

    Ideas?
    • The USA made it illegal to bribe foreign busineses back in the late 70's, I think it was a Boeing/Airbus thing.

      • Re:Ah yes, corruption as standard operating proced (Score:4, Insightful)

        by sdinfoserv ( 1793266 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2023 @07:59PM (#63407620)
        That's a quaint notion... In the US, the 2010 Supreme Court decision equated political donation to "right to petition" - in layman's terms, bribery of US electeds is legal if it's a political donation. That's why we the people no longer have any voice to our bought off elected. Democracy is officially a shame, a thinly veiled drape over a kleptocracy. Sure we still have "elections" and a judicial system, but all the real leavers of power are held by the oligarchy.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by kenh ( 9056 )

          Citizens United was a court case about showing an anti-Hillary movie in theaters and via pay-per-view shortly before the 2008 presidential election, not "bribery" or "campaign donations".

          In short, the ruling states that the rights an individual posesses as an individual still apply if the individual is part of a group (corporation). In other words citizens don't loose their first amendment rights when they come together in a corporation.

          From Antonin Scalia's concurring opinion:

          The dissent says that when the Framers “constitutionalized the right to free speech in the First Amendment , it was the free speech of individual Americans that they had in mind.” Post, at 37. That is no doubt true. All the provisions of the Bill of Rights set forth the rights of individual men and women—not, for example, of trees or polar bears. But the individual person’s right to speak includes the right to speak in association with other individual persons . Surely the dissent does not believe that speech by the Republican Party or the Democratic Party can be censored because it is not the speech of “an individual American.” It is the speech of many individual Americans, who have associated in a common cause, giving the leadership of the party the right to speak on their behalf. The association of individuals in a business corporation is no different—or at least it cannot be denied the right to speak on the simplistic ground that it is not “an individual American.”

          Source: https://www.law.cornel [cornell.edu]

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Entrope ( 68843 )

          In the US, the 2010 Supreme Court decision equated political donation to "right to petition" [...]. That's why we the people no longer have any voice to our bought off elected.

          There was more than one Supreme Court decision in 2010, you know? kenh gave a really good explanation for why your description is wrong, but it's worth exploring a bit more what the actual consequences have been.

          Citizens United was about whether a private organization could speak in relation to an election without any expenditures being considered campaign spending and falling under the full set of federal election regulations. A more modern analog is a social media company censoring a politician or newsp

    • If you are a US citizen, what you don't do is bribe them. Because bribing officials in a foreign country as a US citizen is a very serious crime. And since the USA is about the only country with a law against that (bribery in foreign countries), you can bet they take it very, very serious.
    • Some Chinese bank official will soon be organ harvested (unless they were instructed to do so, in order to help catch the guy).
  • WTF? Wouldn't anyone pay $40 million to release $1.5 billion?

    • Re:Extortion! (Score:4, Funny)

      by BeaverCleaver ( 673164 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2023 @07:22PM (#63407570)

      WTF? Wouldn't anyone pay $40 million to release $1.5 billion?

      I recently received an email from a Nigerian prince asking me to do pretty much the same thing.

    • Not a US citizen who wants to stay out of jail.

      And I fail to see any extortion here. If anything, the Chinese had a better nose than most for large scale fraud going on, and stopped it. Until someone got bribed. I wouldn't want to be in their shoes right now. 40 million dollar will do nothing in China of Xi wants your head.

  • Lets me know who the shit heads are very easily.

  • This is why we don't need to "regulate it" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DeplorableCodeMonkey ( 4828467 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2023 @07:16PM (#63407560)

    Every serious thing that FTX did was in the jurisdiction of the DoJ, Treasury and DHS. SBF is about to get destroyed in court by federal law enforcement and prosecutors for very serious financial crimes.

    BTW, this is how it happens with stocks, commodities, etc. The really serious stuff strongly tends to go straight to the DoJ who show up with guns and arrest warrants, not civil enforcement actions. When JPM got busted for illegal activity in precious metals a few years ago, it was the DoJ who intervened and not the CFTC. People went to prison, JPM paid a nearly $1B criminal fine.

    And in all honesty, this is precisely what we need in all of these markets. We need a handful of regulations that all end in a flavor of "and if you do this, you're turning over all proceeds and subject to prison time."

    • So I'm just curious.
      Why is a Bahamas-incorporated company (FTX) doing business in this case in China, under the jurisdiction of the United States of America DoJ, Treasury and DHS?

      • Why is a Bahamas-incorporated company (FTX) doing business in this case in China, under the jurisdiction of the United States of America DoJ, Treasury and DHS?

        US law states very clearly that it is a serious crime _for any US citizen_ to bribe officials _in foreign countries_. He is a US citizen, he bribed people in China which is a foreign country.

  • with her botched investments of customer funds.
    When she spent it all, she would just hop on SBFs lap and there would be a wild orgy that evening.

  • The person receiving the bride in China has no consequences.

    • I believe he received a medal from Xi though.
    • They should publish the names of the officials and see how Xi Jinping or the CCP courts reacts.
    • I assume you meant "bribe" not "bride".

      I expect this to have very, very serious consequences for them. Hanging wouldn't surprise me. China isn't free-for-all. Xi won't be happy with them, which means they are not up to their neck, but up to their receeding hairline in shit.

  • Nuclear Wessels! (Score:3)

    by Your Anus ( 308149 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2023 @11:57PM (#63407922) Journal
    We must go to Alameda!

  • Bad enough for SBF to be caught doing another thing. Even worse for these corrupt Chinese officials who might earn a trip in the execution bus.

  • Whilst I don't know bribes are necessary, I do have a friend who worked in China for 5+ years and bought an apartment there. When he decided to move back to his home country and sold the apartment, he was denied access to the proceeds of the sale because he's a foreigner, having Chinese wife didn't change the outcome.

  • If it was a facilitating payment, it's not technically a bribe in the US. We paid them by default before even being asked overseas. Personal funds used for those class of payments were reimbursed on official business.

    https://www.antibriberyguidanc... [antibriberyguidance.org]

    Small bribes are given various names depending on context and country; for example, âtea moneyâ(TM) in Kenya or âbaksheeshâ(TM) in Egypt. The term facilitation payment originates from the FCPA and usually covers payments made to officials to

  • He has all you fuckers blaming him for your greed and he's cool as a cucumber. Kuddos.

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