
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried (C) is led absent handcuffed by officers of the Royal Bahamas Police Pressure at the Nassau, Bahamas, courthouse on December 19, 2022.
Kris Ingraham | AFP | Getty Photos
Sam Bankman-Fried will not return to the U.S. and will as a substitute be remanded again to Bahamian jail on the orders of Bahamian magistrate Shaka Serville, in a shock shift following reports emerged in excess of the weekend that he would surrender himself to U.S. custody.
The disgraced crypto billionaire will return to Fox Hill jail soon after demanding to see a duplicate of his federal indictment.
Bankman-Fried’s lawful staff signaled that they would combat extradition previous week. CNBC and a number of other outlets noted that Bankman-Fried had transformed his brain and would in its place submit himself for extradition nowadays.
In open court, chaos reigned. Bankman-Fried, dressed in a blue suit and white button down, was visibly shaking. His protection attorney advised the court docket that he was “shocked” that Bankman-Fried was in court docket.
“I did not ask for him to be in this article this morning,” the lawyer explained. Franklyn Williams KC, the Bahamian prosecutor, explained that he “recognized that [Bankman-Fried] intended to waive extradition,” in accordance to an NBC Information producer current in the courtroom.
Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of FTX, is escorted inside of of the Magistrate’s Court docket in Nassau, Bahamas, on Monday, Dec. 19, 2022.
Victor J. Blue | Bloomberg | Getty Visuals
The FTX founder arrived at Bahamian courtroom in a convoy of law enforcement autos, seriously guarded, just following 10 A.M. Jap Time.
The go arrives just times soon after he was remanded to the health care device of Bahamas’ infamous Fox Hill jail.
The Condition Office in a 2020 report referred to as the disorders at Fox Hill Jail “severe,” citing “overcrowding, inadequate diet, inadequate sanitation, bad ventilation, and insufficient healthcare care.”
Professional medical treatment in particular is spotty at the Bahamian jail, the report stated. The former billionaire was transported from just one of his several multi-million greenback penthouse properties to the jail very last 7 days — nevertheless Bankman-Fried was entitled to his own area in the health care wing, Bloomberg documented.
Sam Bankman-Fried faces existence in federal prison, without having the probability of supervised launch, if convicted on just a single of eight offenses that prosecutors have billed him with.
His sentence could be lowered by mitigating things. Demo attorneys and former prosecutors say that, in follow, many white-collar defendants are offered lesser sentences than what the suggestions dictate. So, even in large fraud circumstances, you can see existence sentences substantially lessened.
