Two congressmen want to know more about the timing of the arrest of Sam Bankman-Fried.
In a Friday (Feb. 10) letter to Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Gary Gensler, House Financial Services Committee (HFSC) Chairman Patrick McHenry and Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Bill Huizenga noted that the FTX founder was arrested by Bahamian authorities the night before he was to testify before the committee.
The arrest was made Dec. 12 in anticipation of an extradition request from the United States, and officials from both the SEC and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) said that same evening that they would file charges against Bankman-Fried the next morning.
“Yet, the timing of the charges and his arrest raise serious questions about the SEC’s process and cooperation with the Department of Justice,” the congressmen said in the letter. “The American people deserve transparency from you and your agency.”
In their letter, McHenry and Huizenga ask Gensler to provide records and communications among or between employees of the SEC, the Office of the Chair and the Department of Justice referring to or relating to the charges against Bankman-Fried by Feb. 24.
The SEC did not immediately reply to PYMNTS’ request for comment.
On Dec. 9, days before his arrest, Bankman-Fried tweeted in a reply to Rep. Maxine Waters — who was chairwoman of the HFSC at the time and is now the committee’s ranking member — that he was willing to testify on Dec. 13.
1) I still do not have access to much of my data — professional or personal. So there is a limit to what I will be able to say, and I won’t be as helpful as I’d like.
But as the committee still thinks it would be useful, I am willing to testify on the 13th. https://t.co/KR34BsNaG1
— SBF (@SBF_FTX) December 9, 2022
Waters had invited him to do so in a tweet a week earlier.
“As you know, the collapse of FTX has harmed over one million people,” Waters said in a Dec. 5 tweet directed at Bankman-Fried. “Your testimony would not only be meaningful to members of Congress, but is also critical to the American people.”
Four days after Bankman-Fried’s acceptance of the invitation, and the night before he was to testify, he was arrested in the Bahamas.
The move was announced in a tweet by SDNY that was attributed to U.S. Attorney Damian Williams and said the arrest was made at the request of the U.S. government.
USA Damian Williams: Earlier this evening, Bahamian authorities arrested Samuel Bankman-Fried at the request of the U.S. Government, based on a sealed indictment filed by the SDNY. We expect to move to unseal the indictment in the morning and will have more to say at that time.
— US Attorney SDNY (@SDNYnews) December 12, 2022
Waters expressed disappointment over the timing of the arrest, telling PYMNTS in an emailed statement: “The public has been waiting eagerly to get these answers under oath before Congress, and the timing of this arrest denies the public this opportunity.”
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