The US Government Had Sam Bankman-Fried Arrested Even Though He Made No Attempt to Flee the Bahamas

PRELIMINARY STATEMENT

II. BACKGROUND TO ALL MOTIONS

G. The Extradition Proceedings

Unlike some FTX employees, Mr. Bankman-Fried made no attempt to flee the Bahamas, where he had been living and working for more than two years and was a permanent resident. Mr. Bankman-Fried repeatedly expressed his desire to remain in the Bahamas where he felt he could be helpful in assisting FTX in making customers whole, and he met actively with FTX’s primary regulators there.[9] Instead, the U.S. Government had him arrested and detained in prison pending extradition. To avoid a lengthy extradition proceeding, Mr. Bankman-Fried agreed to an expedited procedure called “simplified extradition” under the Extradition Treaty. Under this procedure, Mr. Bankman-Fried consented to be tried only on the charges in the Original Indictment for which the Government of the Bahamas agreed to extradition. The Bahamian government consented to extradition for Mr. Bankman-Fried to be tried here on seven of the eight counts. The Warrant of Surrender signed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Bahamas included a schedule of charges on which Mr. Bankman-Fried’s extradition was based. That schedule did not include the campaign finance charge.

[9] See, e.g., @SBF_FTX,TWITTER (Nov. 15, 2022, 11:40 PM) https://twitter.com/SBF_FTX/status/1592739393533792258 (“My goal—my one goal—is to do right by customers. . . I’m contributing what I can to doing so. I’m meeting in-person with regulators and working with the teams to do what we can for customers”).