Bahamian officials asked Sam Bankman-Fried to mint new crypto coins after FTX had filed for bankruptcy, lawyers claim
- Bahamian officials asked Sam Bankman-Fried to mint new crypto coins as FTX collapsed, US lawyers say.
- According to court documents, the officials told SBF to transfer the digital assets to their control.
Bahamian government officials asked Sam Bankman-Fried to mint new crypto coins as FTX collapsed, lawyers for FTX said in a court filing on Monday.
Bloomberg first reported the news.
Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas on Monday after the US filed criminal charges. US authorities confirmed the arrest on social media, and the SEC released charges on Tuesday morning, accusing Bankman-Fried of a "years-long" fraud.
According to the Monday court filing, FTX's CEO John Ray III and his team tried to block unauthorized users from FTX systems and watched as they minted new FTT tokens in the early hours of November 12.
The court filing accused Bahamas officials of instructing Bankman-Fried and FTX cofounder Gary Wang to "mint a substantial amount of new tokens."
The court documents also alleged the officials had told the pair to "transfer hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of those new tokens and other digital assets" to the control of the Bahamian officials.
FTX filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on November 11 and Bankman-Fried stepped down as CEO with immediate effect.
The court papers also pointed to a November 9 email to the Bahamas attorney general where Bankman-Fried offered to open up withdrawals for all Bahamian customers.
Tensions between the US team and the Bahamian officials have been escalating in the court filings. A January federal court date is set to decide how much deference the US team must give the Bahamas in the investigation, per Bloomberg.
Representatives for the Bahamian government did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.