Sam Bankman-Fried Trial Can Proceed on Original Charges Only, Says DoJ

Sam Bankman-Fried may only have to face the original charges brought against him at his U.S. trial this year after the Department of Justice said it was willing to postpone trying him on several additional counts.

The FTX founder was originally hit with eight criminal charges by U.S. prosecutors in December, including wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

He pleaded not guilty to the charges in January.

A superseding indictment in February then added several new charges, including conspiracy to make unlawful political contributions, while a further charge in March accused him of bribing Chinese officials.

In total, the former crypto icon was facing 13 charges from the DoJ.

But Bankman-Fried and his lawyers have argued that the later counts violate the extradition agreement between the U.S. and the Bahamas.

Prosecutors said they would only move ahead with the additional charges if the Bahamas approved. This week, a court in the Caribbean country granted him the right to seek a judicial review of the terms of his extradition, with the post-extradition charges not able to be approved until after this process is complete.

In a bid to keep proceedings moving along, prosecutors filed a letter to the New York court handling the U.S. case against Bankman-Fried late last night, saying they were willing to temporarily forgo the five additional charges to allow the trial for the first batch to go ahead.

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams wrote that it appeared the litigation in the Bahamas “will take time” and may not be resolved in time for the scheduled October 2 trial.

Therefore, the U.S. Government “is prepared to proceed to trial as scheduled on the counts contained in the original Indictment”, he wrote. In doing so, the extra charges will be “severed.”

But he asked the judge to schedule a trial on those counts for the first quarter of 2024, or the nearest convenient time afterward.

The October trial, therefore, looks set to go ahead at the Manhattan court, though it is just one of the legal battles surrounding the FTX fallout. While bankruptcy proceedings are ongoing, there is also a lawsuit targeting FTX’s celebrity promoters as well as Bankman-Fried himself.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) have both lined up their own lawsuits against crypto’s former whizzkid.