Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the collapsed FTX crypto exchange, is facing 12 new criminal charges accusing him of conspiring to make over 300 illegal political donations, Reuters reports.
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The new charges also include four for fraud and eight for conspiracy. While top former top managers at FTX and Alameda Research plead guilty, Bankman-Fried is still trying to convince the court to remain free on bail.
The government says Bankman-Fried alongside two other ex-FTX executives donated millions of dollars to influence lawmakers. Prosecutors claim those donations were unlawful as Bankman-Fried made them with corporate funds.
In December last year, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accused Bankman-Fried for defrauding investors. The SEC noted that FTX raised more than $1.8 billion from equity investors, without telling them that the exchange was sending customers' funds to Alameda Research, Bankman-Fried's privately-held crypto hedge fund.
The SEC also found that FTX offered to Alameda an undisclosed "special treatment," including providing the hedge fund with an unlimited "line of credit" funded by the platform's customers.
SEC Chair, Gary Gensler, said in a press release that Bankman-Fried "built a house of cards on a foundation of deception while telling investors that it was one of the safest buildings in crypto." If convicted, the disgraced crypto entrepreneur could face up to 115 years in prison.
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