Summary
- Sam Bankman-Fried claimed his arrest was political retaliation.
- He said he was indicted by the Biden administration's anti-virtual-asset regulatory authorities shortly after making large donations to the Republican Party in 2022.
- Bankman raised the issue of SEC internal message deletion and the political background at the time of the case.
Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), who was convicted as the main culprit in the collapse of crypto exchange FTX, claimed that his arrest was political retaliation.
On the 15th (local time), according to The Block, Sam Bankman said, "I was attacked by anti-virtual-asset regulatory authorities led by the Biden administration immediately after donating a large sum to the Republican Party."
He said, "I was center-left in 2020, but moved to a centrist stance in 2022 and secretly donated tens of millions of dollars to the Republican Party," adding, "a few weeks later, the SEC and the Department of Justice under the Biden administration indicted me, and I was arrested the day before my hearing testimony."
He also claimed that then-SEC Chair Gary Gensler intentionally deleted internal messages. Bankman said, "Gensler lost the list of internal communications for the period related to my case," and "House Republican members also said my arrest could be 'a political move to prevent testimony at the hearing.'"
SBF was arrested in the Bahamas in December 2022, was found guilty in November 2023 of misappropriating billions of dollars of FTX customer funds, and was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Son Min
sonmin@bloomingbit.ioHello I’m Son Min, a journalist at BloomingBit![[Market] Bitcoin falls below $82,000...$320 million liquidated over the past hour](https://media.bloomingbit.io/PROD/news/93660260-0bc7-402a-bf2a-b4a42b9388aa.webp?w=250)
