Authorities in the Bahamas on Monday evening arrested Sam Bankman-Fried, the ragged CEO of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange which fell to earth with a bang final month, costing customers and creditors billions of bucks and cratering neat swaths of the crypto market.

The Royal Bahamas Police Power took Bankman-Fried into custody following a proper quiz made by U.S. authorities, which has requested the Bahamian authorities to extradite the ragged CEO and on Tuesday issued a formal criticism detailing a name of prison charges alongside side wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, securities fraud, securities fraud conspiracy and money laundering.

“The Bahamas and the United States have a shared hobby in retaining responsible all participants connected to FTX who would possibly maybe maybe merely have betrayed the general public belief and broken the law,” acknowledged Bahamian Top Minister Philip Davis in a assertion.

The Bahamas additionally plans to proceed taking a peep into doable prison misconduct all for the crumple of FTX and its connected entities alongside the U.S. scramble investigation.

The exchange and its founder had been essentially essentially based in the Caribbean nation due to its favorable stance towards crypto companies, which become a source of competitors amid rumors of shut ties between Bankman-Fried and the archipelago’s chief regulator.

Bankman-Fried’s arrest used to be additionally confirmed by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, which on Tuesday morning published an indictment painting Bankman-Fried’s actions in stark phrases.

“All over this length, Bankman-Fried portrayed himself as a in charge chief of the crypto group” and “touted the importance of regulation and accountability,” the criticism acknowledged. “Customers across the arena believed his lies, and despatched billions of bucks to FTX, believing their resources had been stable on the FTX trading platform.”

“But from the launch up,” the criticism added, “Bankman-Fried improperly diverted customer resources to his privately-held crypto hedge fund, Alameda Analysis LLC and then primitive these customer funds to originate undisclosed venture investments, lavish valid estate purchases, and neat political donations.”

Bankman-Fried’s arrest and indictment near after weeks of hypothesis and righteous indignation over a perceived lack of effort to detain the disgraced founder after his exchange collapsed in spectacular vogue mid November. Many in the crypto world had been especially bemused by Bankman-Fried’s apparent freedom to embark on a lengthy media tour by which he retailed his most well-liked version of events to countless recordsdata outlets, against the advice of his honest valid crew.

FTX collapsed in mid-November after it emerged that its sister company, the trading firm Alameda Analysis, had been gambling with customer funds to own a huge hole on its steadiness sheet. That left wafer-skinny collateral backing person deposits, which proved insufficient when FTX due to this truth suffered a scramble on customer deposits.

FTX used to be soon compelled to say economic slay, and the ensuing hunt for Alameda’s lost billions make clear a name of shady practices on the heart of an exchange whose founder had weeks prior been featured in front veil splashes by the likes of Fortune Magazine as the face of the crypto industry’s first charge side. Contagion followed instant, bringing down a host of companies to which Bankman-Fried had prolonged bailout loans earlier in the year while casting himself as a white knight.

Hours sooner than his arrest on Monday Bankman-Fried appears to be like to have tweeted essentially the most modern in a line of advert hoc defenses,  responding to an article that claimed his FTX internal circle operated a secret Signal group called “Wirefraud” to discuss operations that had been saved under wraps.

“If here is solely valid then I wasn’t a member of that internal circle. (I’m pretty constructive it’s honest valid counterfeit; I even have never heard of such a group),” tweeted Bankman-Fried, around two hours sooner than authorities released an announcement confirming his arrest.