FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried charged with paying $40m bribe to Chinese official

euronews.com:

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried has been charged with directing $40 million (€36.86 million) in bribes to one or more Chinese officials to unfreeze assets relating to his cryptocurrency business.

In a newly rewritten indictment, which was unsealed on Tuesday March 28, the charge was revealed to be in relation to a violation of anti-bribery provisions, and it brings the number of charges facing the cryptocurrency platform founder to 13.

Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas in December and brought to the United States after FTX filed for bankruptcy following the equivalent of a bank run on the global cryptocurrency exchange.

He has remained free on a $250 million (€230.37 million) personal bond that lets him stay with his parents in California.

He has pleaded not guilty to charges that he cheated investors out of billions of dollars before his business collapsed.

The charge also contains language revealing that a fifth arrest was imminent in what US Attorney Damian Williams has repeatedly described as a continuing investigation. That unidentified individual, according to the indictment, participated in the bribery conspiracy with Bankman-Fried and “will be arrested in the Southern District of New York."

A spokesperson for Bankman-Fried's lawyers told The Associated Press Tuesday that they had no comment.

On Tuesday a judge banned Bankman-Fried from communicating with current or ex-employees of FTX or Alameda Research, its affiliated cryptocurrency hedge fund trading firm. 

The order also limits Bankman-Fried to one laptop and phone and bans him from encrypted communications or other cellphones, computers, or “smart” devices with internet access.

The alleged bribes stemmed from the operation of Alameda Research. The indictment