The former boss of the FTX cryptocurrency trading platform, Sam Bankman-Fried, pleaded not guilty on Thursday to the five new counts served on him by a federal judge in Manhattan, including corruption.
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At the beginning of January, “SBF”, as he is nicknamed, had already pleaded not guilty to eight counts, mainly related to the fraud he is accused of in connection with his management of FTX.
Mr. Bankman-Fried and other executives are accused of using the accounts of FTX clients, without their knowledge, to fuel the speculative operations of Alameda, his investment company.
A significant part of the sums supposedly misappropriated were not recovered by the new team responsible for carrying out the orderly liquidation of the company.
Extradited to the United States from the Bahamas in December, “SBF” faces decades in prison. His trial is due to begin in October in New York.
Among the new charges added to the file by the services of the federal prosecutor of Manhattan, Damian Williams, figure that of corruption.
US authorities claim that Sam Bankman-Fried made Chinese officials pay at least $40 million in bribes to recover access to frozen assets.
According to the document filed on Tuesday, Mr. Bankman-Fried transferred, in 2021, these funds to obtain from the Chinese authorities the release of more than a billion dollars of cryptocurrency housed in accounts in the name of Alameda. .
The American authorities do not indicate whether or not the approach made it possible to put an end to the sanctions.
Then the second largest cryptocurrency exchange, FTX filed for bankruptcy in November, victim of a crisis of confidence and requests for mass withdrawals from customers.
Also charged, two other former executives of FTX and Alameda, Gary Wang and Caroline Ellison, pleaded guilty to several counts and agreed to cooperate with the American authorities, unlike Mr. Bankman-Fried, who contests the charges brought against him.
A time credited with a personal fortune of 26 billion dollars, Sam Bankman-Fried is also accused of having invested, without authorization, funds from FTX clients in real estate in the Bahamas.
The Manhattan federal prosecutor also accuses him of having used these same funds to make donations to Democratic political figures, in particular Joe Biden, during his presidential campaign.